DSA = DSS?

[L. Sassaman]

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On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, John Bacalle wrote:

> As far as I can tell from reading docs and FAQs[1] DSA (as it appears in
> GnuPG) is the same as DSS under PGP (as it appears in PGP 5/6), yes? 
> 
> IOW, in all the reading I've done it's implicit/tacit that GnuPG will
> inter-operate with PGP, with the exception of RSA! So, I take that to
> mean that GnuPG's -- Pubkey: ELG-E, DSA, ELG -- DSA and ElGamal default
> key pair option is therefore synonymous with PGP's DSS. 

ELG (ElGamal signing) is not supported by PGP, because it is not secure
enough. There are many ways of implementing it incorrectly (which I
believe Werner has avoided), but there could be many more problems that
turn up later, and there is no guarantee that other implementations would
implement it correctly. (Bad things like leaking the secret key material
when making signatures can occur. It's ugly.)

For some reason, the encryption subkey in PGP is called "DH". It's really
ElGamal Encryption (ELG-E). 

[Simplified explaination] DSS is a paper that describes a standard for
digital signatures. It mandates the useage of DSA with SHA-1. The actual
algorithm used in PGP is DSA, but it is used in conformance with DSS (the
hash is SHA-1). If you use RIPEMD160, for instance, you couldn't call DSA
DSS.
 
> Straighten me out, please. 

Mostly correct. Just disable that ELG support, and add the RSA and IDEA
modules (provided it's leagal where you are).

__

L. Sassaman

System Administrator                |  "And all our yesterdays
Technology Consultant               |   have lighted fools..."
icq.. 10735603                      |  
pgp.. finger://ns.quickie.net/rabbi |          --Shakespeare







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