Robert Relyea wrote: >> One other final thing I'm stumbling over is key and hash types. I >> recognise the names RSA and DSA but is there a particular advantage of >> using one over the other? > RSA and DSA have different performance characteristics, RSA has a fairly > fast verification compared to signing. It's also more widely understood. > At one time DSA was the only one of the two that were not patent > encumbered.
Adding to Bob's good info: -With DSA, if you sign the exact same data over and over again you'll get a different signature each time (thanks to k). RSA will always yield the same signature for the same input data. -DSA signatures are usually smaller. An RSA signature ends up being the same size as the keysize (meaning a 1024 bit key yields a 1024 bit signature). For comparison a raw DSA signature made with a 1024 bit key is 40 bytes. Dave _______________________________________________ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-crypto
