can you see any problem with this?

[Robert J. Hansen]

Adrian Thurston wrote:
> But speed at the decryption end is a concern, so I thought I would break
> up an encrypted message into packets and when a client requests it serve
> up only the packet that corresponds to the session key encrypted to
> them, then the content packet. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems as
> though it should work. I'd like to know if there is any non-obvious
> reason why it is a bad idea.

At first blush it seems like a case of there being way too much hammer
for the nail you have in mind.

1.  Compose a single message: "the magic words are... [insert passphrase
here]".


2.  Write a script to encrypt each message to each recipient's key and
mail it to them.  If this takes more than 20 lines of Perl, something's
wrong.

3.  Compose your future traffic as normal, but symmetrically encrypt it
and send it on to your recipients.


... Admittedly, I don't know the particulars of your environment, so
this might be inappropriate for your needs.  But it's the first thing
that comes to mind as I read your description of what's happening.