Re: Tough Choices: PGP vs. RSA Data Security

[markh@wimsey.bc.ca (Mark C. Henderson)]

> All he has to do is let us pay a licence fee for pgp.  What's the advantage
> to him in asking for a different piece of code that uses RSAREF and DES
> instead of Phil's code and IDEA?  I can't see it, except that using DES
> blows away the security of the program...
With respect to this, putting another symmetric cipher into RSAREF is a 
simple matter. I've done it for triple DES (3 key EEE version). Once
(and if) we get permission from RSADSI to distribute it, it will go
into the RIPEM distribution. I don't see any reason why we couldn't
plug in IDEA. If you look at the RSAREF code you'll see that it would
be technically very easy.
> 
> No, I think this suggestion should be put down now, or we'll splinter and
> give them exactly the divide-and-conquer opening they're looking for.

Problems with RSAREF/RIPEM:
1. Use of RSAREF/RIPEM in support of a commercial enterprise is 
prohibited without paying a licence fee. Note that they can get 
you on copyright violations rather than patent infringement 
if you break the RSAREF licence agreement. My bet is that it makes 
enforcement a much simpler matter (you might say, especially in Canada).
Note that personal use on a commercial system is OK.

2. One needs to get permission every time one wants to modify RSAREF in
any substantial way. 

3. The pseudo random number generation is suspect, especially if we're 
considering using symmetric cipher keys of > 64 bits. Essentially at 
most 2^128 distinct sequences of pseudo random numbers can be generated. 
2^128 is a big number, but on the other hand it does make one wonder whether
it is worth adding a scheme which uses 192-24 bits of key material.
It isn't that I know how to break it, but on the other hand, it wouldn't
surprise me if someone could compute, in less time than it would take
to try 2^128 possibilities by brute force, some smaller number of 
possibilities for the encryption key given the IV which is output 
in plaintext in a RIPEM message. Call me paranoid.

4. We need something better than 56 bit key DES (said it before).

5. export problems.

6. RIPEM currently has no way to handle certificates or sign other people's
public keys. This is, of course, serious.

Good things:
1. One can use it for non-commercial purposes in North America.

2. Performance of RIPEM is considerably better than the original RSAREF
code. The DES routines have been replaced. Furthermore a lot of platform
specific improvements have been made to the large integer operations.
The point being, that performance is similar to PGP.

3. The promise of PEM compatibility. (People are working on getting
some support for certifificates into RIPEM.)


The real point is that if we put our considerable resources behind something
like RIPEM or 'legal' PGP and we had RSADSI's cooperation in terms of 
permission to modify, improve and update RSAREF then we could almost
certainly have a high quality legal personal public key encryption program
with the features we want, in a few months.

It is a compromise. PGP is already done and is a very impressive
software package. It certainly has a better feature set than RIPEM.
It has been exported, so the export control issue is not a serious one.

I do think the optimal solution (for both RSADSI and us) is to get some 
sort of scheme into place where PGP could be used legally for a licence 
fee (either per key or per person). Perhaps the folks at RSADSI could
sign keys as PAID (but not necessarily authenticated) for US$50. They
would certainly make some money in the process.

Mark

-- 
Mark Henderson
markh@wimsey.bc.ca
RIPEM key available by key server/finger/E-mail
  MD5OfPublicKey: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433