Unix encryption methods

Lyle McElhaney lmc at denelcor.UUCP
Sun Dec 9 12:10:45 AEST 1984


My posting about a mailing list for Unix security issues seems to have
gotten out (I sometimes wonder...) and one comment about the security
of the mail list itself is that the contents should be encrypted. So...
a few questions to the assembled masses seems to be in order:

Would crypt(1) be appropriate for this use? I know the enigma codes can
be broken, but has anyone actually done it in the case of crypt? Is it
something to worry about? If crypt is not right, what would be a more
acceptable way of encryting the data? I assume we have a way of passing
the keys about securely.

Lastly, since crypt is not *supposed* to be passed outside the US of A,
how can we extend the list to those in, say, Korea? Caesar encoding
probably won't hack it.

Comments to me via mail, please. I'll summarize.
-- 
Lyle McElhaney
{hao, stcvax, brl-bmd, nbires, csu-cs} !denelcor!lmc



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