Jamie Nicolson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Jens wrote:
> > This is amazing. They are either readable with the private key of the 
> > receiver and also with the private key of the sender?
> 
> Technically, the message is not encrypted with a public key. A one-time 
> symmetric key is generated and used to encrypt the message (with 
> triple-DES, for example). One copy of the symmetric key is encrypted 
> with the recipient's public key, and another copy of the symmetric key 
> is encrypted with the sender's public key. Both encrypted copies of the 
> key are included in the email message. To read the message, one of the 
> copies of the symmetric key is decrypted with the reader's private key, 
> and then the recovered symmetric key is used to decrypt the message.
 

This makes it clear. Thank you for the explanation.

Jens


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