If the message is encrypted symmetrically...

[Joseph Oreste Bruni]

By definition of symmetric encryption, you must use the same key to  
decrypt that was used to encrypt. I'm not sure what you're really  
asking.

When you say "public key is used to generate symmetric key" you lost  
me. Symmetric keys are typically just random numbers pulled from /dev/ 
random or similar.

Joe


On Jun 20, 2007, at 9:26 AM, Andrew Berg wrote:

> Why can't I use the same (symmetric) key I used to encrypt (public key
> is used to generate symmetric key that the corresponding private key
> can calculate) to decrypt?
>

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