Re: making public keys public

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Eric writes:
> someone (Alex Strasheim ?) writes:
>    Perhaps we would have 
>    a default web, which would have everyone's key in it.  
> 
> This is a really bad idea.  Some "public" keys should not be made
> public, but rather revealed only to the correspondent.  Forward
> secrecy is the reason.  If the public key has never been in the
> possession of an opponent, and assuming the results of the public key
> operation yield little or no information about the modulus, then when
> the keys are changed and destroyed, no amount of factoring can find
> the private key because the public key isn't around to factor.

If you're not going to make the public key public, why use public key
cryptography at all ?  Save time and effort and use a symmetric cipher.

- - -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server
"Don't say my head was empty, when I had things to hide...." --Men at Work

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From: lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu

   If you're not going to make the public key public, why use public key
   cryptography at all ?  Save time and effort and use a symmetric cipher.

You can't do authentication with a shared secret key, because there's
nothing to differentiate the two sides of the link.

In addition, a closely held public key might be held by 10 people;
with secret keys there are 90 different private keys instances to
manage.

Eric