symmetric encryption broken

Michael H. Warfield mhw at wittsend.com
Fri Mar 9 21:49:06 CET 2001


On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 01:40:23PM -0700, Nathan Johnson wrote:
> >What happens if you specify "a" (ascii armor) or "t" (text file)?

> Both fail, as does --textmode.

> gpg -a -z0 -c a
> gpg -a -z0 -c a.asc
> ls
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users           8  a
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users         122  a.asc
> -rw-rw-r--    1 user        users         281  a.asc.asc

	Huh...  Wait a minute.  You're encrypting it once and then
encrypting it a second time.  What are you trying to accomplish here?

	What happens when you do the following:

	gpg -a -z0 -c a
	cp a.asc a1.asc
	gpg a1.asc
	ls -l

	Encrypt a to a.asc.  Copy the encrypted file to another file (because
gpg will insist on decrypting it back to the base name minus the .asc).
Decrypt the new encrypted file back to a new decrypted file.  Compare them.

> >I'm largely stuck working with Idea...

> Mine doesn't have Idea installed, I don't know why.  I tried 3DES and Blowfish .

	You have to load it as a module.  Presuming that the module was
installed when you instaled gpg, you should be able to add this to the
.gnupg/options file:

load-extension idea

> >Hmmm...  RedHat 7.0?

> Mandrake something or other.  I'm contemplating installing SuSE 7.0 or debian,
> though.

	Actually shouldn't make any difference.

	Mandrake is rpm based.  Did you install it from RPM or build it
yourself?

	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (678) 463-0932   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!




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