Elgamal signatures (was Re: splitting keys)

[Brian M. Carlson]

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On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 07:56:54AM -0500, David Shaw wrote:
> There are many reasons not to use Elgamal signatures.  Only GnuPG
> supports them, so you can't communicate with any other OpenPGP
> program.  They are also incredibly slow, which means people have to
> sit for 10-20 seconds every time they need to check one of your
> messages.  If they have their mail reader configured to automatically
> verify signatures, then they can be reading happily along, hit one of
> your messages, and they're locked up for a while.

They really aren't that slow. I have a Duron 900, and it's pretty fast,
actually. I haven't tried it on my PowerPC 750FX (G3) 700MHz, but I
suspect it can't be *that* slow. I happen to prefer Elgamal over DSA
because it is slightly more secure if implemented correctly. Because it
is entirely in the field of p, you have a signature of size 2p, instead
of 2q (q=3D=3D160). Therefore, it is theoretically harder to brute force an
Elgamal signature than a DSA signature. And because they are both based
on the Discrete Logarithm Problem, breaking either of them that way is
equally difficult. Therefore, I contend that Elgamal is more secure
than DSA.

This message is signed with my Elgamal key (0xdca1913a) instead of my
normal key (0x560553e7).

--=20
Brian M. Carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.ath.cx> 0x560553e7
"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare
 to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it
 after all." --Douglas Adams

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