From owner-freebsd-security Tue Nov 2 12:57: 9 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 758) id 3DEFC1541C; Tue, 2 Nov 1999 12:57:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D1F81CD446; Tue, 2 Nov 1999 12:56:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@hub.freebsd.org) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 12:56:56 -0800 (PST) From: Kris Kennaway To: James Wyatt Cc: Dug Song , Niels Provos , security@FreeBSD.ORG, markus@openbsd.org Subject: Re: OpenSSH patches In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, James Wyatt wrote: > I was under the impression that the RSA code was best for ApacheSSL > support and anything else (like ssh) could use several others (DES, > BlowFish, etc...). There's a fundamental difference between public-key algorithms like RSA, and symmetric algorithms like DES and Blowfish. RSA is used for key distribution in SSH where you have a private key on your client and the corresponding public key on the server. YOu can't use a symmetric algorithm to do that (altough there are non-restricted Public-key algorithms which could be used to replace RSA). You can still use it in "password" mode, which uses the UNIX account password to generate a key for a symmetric algorithm like Blowfish. Kris ---- Cthulhu for President! For when you're tired of choosing the _lesser_ of two evils.. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message