On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Jon Callas wrote:
-> (4) What other algorithm(s) do you want to see as MAY algorithms?
I'd like something similar to the ssh-specs, where you can introduce new
ciphers "on the fly", if you wish to, by just giving them a string as a name
which needs to be unique, so they suggest
"ciphername(_at_)my(_dot_)do(_dot_)main" for that
purpose, e.g. "distorted-blowfish(_at_)foebud(_dot_)org" or something like
that. I
think introducing a magic number which says "there's a packet with a string
following which specifies the algorithm" shouldn't be too hard. The same
applies for the public key algorithm, btw, there's at least RSA, McEliece,
ElGamal and Chor-Rivest and variants of these (especially elliptic curves
come to mind) for encryption and a whole bunch of others for signatures. I
think an "open" standard should allow implementing new algorithms easily.
--
Christopher Creutzig # Im Samtfelde 19 # D-33098 Paderborn # V+49-5251-71873
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(Eike Rathke auf der Gatebau'97)