Un-Documented Feature

PGP 2.6ui has an undocumented feature.

When generating a Public/Secret key pair PGP documentaion shows
the command "pgp -kg" as the way to generate the keys.
I had posted about how pgp uses a small public key exponent
of 17 which is 5 bits.
It turns out that this is only the default setting.
An Un-Documented feature in PGP 2.6ui (I don't know about other
versions as I don't have source code for them) lets you specify
the number of bits in your public key exponent.
The command "pgp -kg keybits ebits" will let you specify this
public key exponent size. For example "pgp -kg 1024 256" will
generate a key with modulus of aprox 1024 bits and a public
key exponent of 256 bits rather than the 5 bit default.

Too Bad pgp doesn't let you look at the public key exponent.
I had to write some code to see them.

					-tom

> 
> PGP 2.6ui has an undocumented feature.
> 
> When generating a Public/Secret key pair PGP documentaion shows
> the command "pgp -kg" as the way to generate the keys.
> I had posted about how pgp uses a small public key exponent
> of 17 which is 5 bits.
> It turns out that this is only the default setting.
> An Un-Documented feature in PGP 2.6ui (I don't know about other
> versions as I don't have source code for them) lets you specify
> the number of bits in your public key exponent.
> The command "pgp -kg keybits ebits" will let you specify this
> public key exponent size. For example "pgp -kg 1024 256" will
> generate a key with modulus of aprox 1024 bits and a public
> key exponent of 256 bits rather than the 5 bit default.
> 
> Too Bad pgp doesn't let you look at the public key exponent.
> I had to write some code to see them.
>

But then again, cypherpunks _do_ write code, right?  ,-)

- paul