Is a secret key compromised by known cleartext?

[Dennis Lambe Jr.]

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On Sat, 2003-05-31 at 04:14, tito@rumford.de wrote:
> If I got an email with a message in cleartext immediately=20
> followed by the same message encrypted to my public key --=20
> would that change the status of my secret key (being secret)=20
> abruptly to "being well known"?

If that were the case, all someone would have to do to discover your
secret key would be to encrypt something with your public key and
compare the result to the original.  You could hardly call it a "secret
key" if all it took to know the secret was to use the system as it was
meant to be used.

--Dennis Lambe

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Comment: My public key is available at http://cif.rochester.edu/~malsyned/public_key.html

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