PGP's handling of GPG's secret keys

[Wesley J Landaker]

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On Wednesday 08 November 2000 12:58pm, Marc A. Matteo wrote:

> However, importing that key into PGP actually imports a (seemingly)
> fully functioning key pair, both public and private.  Really?  Is
> this true?  How?

Sure: you're probably just getting a real public key that's being 
regenerated from the secret key. With most (if not all) public key 
algorithms used by PGP/GPG, the public key can be made with minimal 
effort from the secret key (whereas the converse is not true--the 
public key cannot be made from the secret key).

I know this is true for RSA and RSA-like algorithms, and I believe it's 
true with Diffe-Hellman (and variants like ElGamal).

- -- 
Wesley J. Landaker - wjl@mindless.com           ICQ# 17241646
http://wjl.cjb.net                 PGP DSS/DH Key: 0x0F338E07
PGPKey FP: 3AAA 424B B488 198E B68B  C0E5 390A BACA 0F33 8E07
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Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: See www.gnupg.org or www.pgpi.com to obtain PGP software

iEYEARECAAYFAjoKPDoACgkQOQq6yg8zjgc5VwCgjQekZHchRIPR94OQ47tZPBBD
Hx0AoPLxtudO3Kf4yXDlnDBDadgBV/4h
=8goS
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