Dear Robert J. Hansen,
Robert J. Hansen wrote:
Smith, Cathy wrote:
Is there a brief explanation available as to how the cipher is used in
generating the private/public keys? It seems this is separate from the
cipher that is chosen to encrypt my data.
r...@chronicles:~$ gpg --enable-dsa2 --gen-key
Please select what kind of key you want:
(1) DSA and Elgamal (default)
(2) DSA (sign only)
(5) RSA (sign only)
If you choose #1, you will be using, by default, DSA as a signature
algorithm, AES256 as a general-purpose message encryption algorithm,
Elgamal as an asymmetric encryption algorithm, and SHA1 as a hash algorithm.
None of these algorithms are actually used to generate the
private/public keys, though. The private and public keys are just
numbers. GnuPG generates those numbers from a cryptographically secure
pseudorandom number generator, then subjects the numbers to a battery of
mathematical tests to make sure the keys are safe to use.
Is it possible for you to tell us what algorithms your correspondent
expects you to use? Knowing that might help us out quite a bit.
I'd like to know more about the process by which unsigned packages become
signed packages. This matters, I think, when using SELinux, which is what
I do.
Some packages are unsigned, e.g. Xcas, a computer algebra system by
Bernard Parisse at a university in France:
< http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/english.html >
I had to tell the SELinux motor that she must trust two modules loaded
dynamically
when Xcas is launched. I succeeded after many hours.
It would be easier, I think, if Xcas (the application) had a electronic
signature by someone that Fedora 10 trusts ...
Thanks a lot,
David Bernier
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