advantages/disadvantages of DSA/RSA keys (was: Re: implications of subkeys?)

disastry at saiknes.lv.NO.SPaM.NET disastry at saiknes.lv.NO.SPaM.NET
Mon Mar 4 09:17:01 CET 2002


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Ingo Klöcker ingo.kloecker at epost.de wrote:
> On Saturday 02 March 2002 15:21, David Shaw wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 01:51:01PM +0100, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > > On Friday 01 March 2002 20:39, David Shaw wrote:
> > > > Yes.  The algorithm is up to you and what you trust more.  GnuPG
> > > > 1.0.7 gives you the choice between DSA and RSA.  They each have
> > > > advantages and disadvantages.
> > >
> > > Is there somewhere a short but complete list of the advantages and
> > > disadvantages?
> >
> > This is pretty good:
> >      http://www.samsimpson.com/pgpfaq.html
> 
> Thanks. At least from section 8.1 it doesn't seem that RSA keys have any 
> advantages (except the backwards compatibility with plain PGP 2.x).
> Ingo

note that this FAQ was written when there was only v3 RSA keys.

RSA keys have some advantages, at least two:
 they are not limited to 1024 bits like DSA
 they can use hash longer than 160 bits.

__
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