NIST 800-57 compatible unattended encryption?

[Damien Goutte-Gattat]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 04:02:03PM +1100, gnupg at raf.org wrote:
> For some dumb reason I think I was hoping that the RSA
> algorithm wasn't really used to encrypt all the data. I
> thought it was probably used to encrypt a per-file
> randomly-generated symmetric key which was then used to
> encrypt the file (and was encrypted along with the
> file) because it could be faster. But I think I'm
> confusing it with network protocols like TLS.
> 
> Is that what happens with RSA in gpg? [Probably not]

Actually yes, that’s exactly what happens. The data (in your
case, the contents of your file) is symmetrically encrypted using
a randomly generated “session key”, and *that* key is
asymmetrically encrypted using the RSA public key.

Cheers,

- Damien
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