PGP help and comments.

I am really learning to love PGP, and I haven't even used it much yet! I'm 
insisting that all my friends get keys.  But....

I would like to set up two secret keys for myself.  One 512 bits long and 
another 1024 bits long.  I'll distribute the short one.  I'll give the long
one to trusted and close friends.  I'm having difficulty setting it up so that
pgp defaults to using the short key to encrypt stuff.  Note that I want the 
same user id for both, but perhapse with a "secure" flag in the user id of the
large key.  How can I do this?

Can we get someone to compile and distribute pgp for the amoeba, er, I mean
Amiga? ;^)  My friend has one, but no C compiler.

Some suggestions for future versions...

Is there any chance of pgp cloaking it's ascii armoured output to look like
uuencoded data?

I would like to use pgp on the mainframes, but don't want to store my secret
key on their disks.   Would it be possible to have pgp accept it's secret key
via stdin.  I could do an ascii upload of my secret key and never expose my
key to disk-storage.

How about password protecting pgp itself.  No one could use my copy of pgp 
unless they knew my password.  And only my copy of pgp could decrypt my 
secret key.  Just a thought.

How about a -wn option that would wipe the original file 'n' times.  Like 
pgp -wen10 very_secret_stuff cohort.  That should keep even Big Brother from
prying.

Is it possible to have pgp develope a third key that looks just like a regular
key except that when it is used in place of your secret key, it produces  an
alternate plaintext.  This way, if Big Brother "requested" you'r key, and
you needed to dissavow all of you'r messages, you could exchange the third key
for you'r secret key.  When someone used this key, they'd get some insulting
message that may or may not have been the original message...and there'd be
no way of knowing.  I kinda doubt it on this one, but wouldn't it be nice!

Geez, have I really gone on for 40 lines?  Sorry about that, but any comments?

Hope to hear from you.

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My comments below...

---
Nick MacDonald               | NMD on IRC
i6t4@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca  | PGP 2.1 Public key available via finger


On Sat, 3 Apr 1993, J. Michael Diehl wrote:

> I am really learning to love PGP, and I haven't even used it much yet! I'm 
> insisting that all my friends get keys.  But....

I have been 'introducing' my friends to PGP too... I figure that its no
good if I have a key, but no one to use it with...  :-)  Its amazing how
many people will take the time to play with an interesting new toy...

> I would like to set up two secret keys for myself.  One 512 bits long and 
> another 1024 bits long.  I'll distribute the short one.  I'll give the long
> one to trusted and close friends.  I'm having difficulty setting it up so that
> pgp defaults to using the short key to encrypt stuff.  Note that I want the 
> same user id for both, but perhapse with a "secure" flag in the user id of the
> large key.  How can I do this?

I'm not too sure here... but PGP should default to using the newest
(youngest) key on you private key ring...  If you have two of them with
the same name, I'm not sure how you could choose other than the first... 
The trick here might be to a a key size option to PGP, to say I want the
key that is (or is at least) n bits in size.

> Can we get someone to compile and distribute pgp for the amoeba, er, I mean
> Amiga? ;^)  My friend has one, but no C compiler.

I'll not get into computer wars...  I'll just say that I'll take an Amiga
over an IBM clone any day!  >;-)  As far as I can tell.. there are folx
out there that make sure the Amiga version goes public pretty soon after a
new version is released...  I've hade 2.2 since about 3 days after I knew
it was released...  There are a series on AmiNet "mirrors" all over the
world, the one that most IBM'ers would recognize right off being
wuarchive.wustle.edu (128.252.135.4) in /pub/aminet/util/crypt. 

> Some suggestions for future versions...

I have some options on some of your ideas, but I'll save them for another
post at another time..  :-)

J. Michael Diehl <mdiehl@triton.unm.edu> writes:
> 
> I would like to use pgp on the mainframes, but don't want to store my secret
> key on their disks.   Would it be possible to have pgp accept it's secret key
> via stdin.  I could do an ascii upload of my secret key and never expose my
> key to disk-storage.

This is even more dangerous than storing it on the disks of a multi-user
machine.  Unless you are running in a kerberos environment it is trivial to
snoop your upload off the network, and even without that weakness you are
exposing yourself to the same problem that the docs mention (it is really
pretty easy to scan someone's terminal input) only you are giving them the
key outright instead of only giving them the passphrase to your key.

Bad idea.

jim

>J. Michael Diehl <mdiehl@triton.unm.edu> writes:
>> I would like to use pgp on the mainframes, but don't want to store my secret
>> key on their disks.   Would it be possible to have pgp accept it's secret key
>> via stdin.  I could do an ascii upload of my secret key and never expose my
>> key to disk-storage.
> 
> This is even more dangerous than storing it on the disks of a multi-user
> machine.  Unless you are running in a kerberos environment it is trivial to
> snoop your upload off the network, and even without that weakness you are
> exposing yourself to the same problem that the docs mention (it is really
> pretty easy to scan someone's terminal input) only you are giving them the
> key outright instead of only giving them the passphrase to your key.

Point taken. 
> 
> Bad idea.

Sure is.  Thanx.
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