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FTP SW to support PGP in OnNet
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Seems the demise of PGP in favor of S/MIME has been somewhat exaggerated.
Blurb in this week's InfoWorld led me to
http://www.ftp.com/mkt_info/onnet32/tr-pgp.htm
It would be a mistake, though, to say that they have a clue:
E-mail compatibility
Most e-mail systems can send and receive only plain text (technically,
7-bit ASCII characters). So PGP converts the encrypted information
(which is 8-bit) into plain ASCII text using the radix-64 algorithm.
This has a side effect that enhances security even when you don't use
encryption. If you merely add authentication to the message, radix-64
still converts the whole message using its own algorithm. The resulting
message -- even though it's not securely encrypted -- looks garbled to
the casual snoop.
D'Oh!
- -rich
censor the internet! http://www.stanford.edu/~llurch/potw2/
boycott fadetoblack! http://www.fadetoblack.com/prquest.htm
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=QSLW
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