Editing Talk:1553: Public Key

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:The problem is, that there isn’t anything more “workable” at the moment. <small>BTW: 7CD1E35FD2A3A158</small>. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 11:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
:The problem is, that there isn’t anything more “workable” at the moment. <small>BTW: 7CD1E35FD2A3A158</small>. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 11:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
::Well, I don't want to solve the problem of front-end cryptography here, and this site won't either. But the comic appeared in a climate of a quite general consensus and acceptance of the failure of PGP/GPG, and not technically but because of social and usability reasons. This explanation letting out that is quite comically in itself. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.190|108.162.254.190]] 13:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
::Well, I don't want to solve the problem of front-end cryptography here, and this site won't either. But the comic appeared in a climate of a quite general consensus and acceptance of the failure of PGP/GPG, and not technically but because of social and usability reasons. This explanation letting out that is quite comically in itself. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.190|108.162.254.190]] 13:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
:::The main problem of end-to-end email cryptography is serious lack of companies who would actually WANT to do it properly. Most companies are directly interrested in violating your privacy. Keeping hard-to-work-with PGP is in their benefit. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:10, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 
  
 
Remember Responsible Behavior? https://xkcd.com/364/ [[User:Xquestion|Xquestion]] ([[User talk:Xquestion|talk]]) 13:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
Remember Responsible Behavior? https://xkcd.com/364/ [[User:Xquestion|Xquestion]] ([[User talk:Xquestion|talk]]) 13:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  
 
But did the author post his public key anywhere ? :v [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.166|141.101.104.166]] 17:29, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
But did the author post his public key anywhere ? :v [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.166|141.101.104.166]] 17:29, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 
Worth noting that posting his private key actually would be crowdsourcing his signing decisions, since anyone could do it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.102|108.162.221.102]] 04:57, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 
 
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
 
    Hash: SHA1
 
   
 
    FWIW, I use PGP. :)
 
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
    Version: GnuPG v1
 
   
 
    iEYEARECAAYFAlWuhWoACgkQHkr3KdXO/9A/ZACeM5Oho5XEDZnjo2q4yZBTqABo
 
    ET0Ani928heXg9aHmju0e0aK8JV7pvxH
 
    =CsEo
 
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
''&mdash; [[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 18:17, 21 July 2015 (UTC)''
 
 
"the keys themselves do not hold "private" or "public" roles until one is released and becomes the public key" --- that might be true of ''some'' crypto-systems, but it is definite '''not''' true of anything based on RSA, such as PGP/GPG. The prime factors (or exponents derived from them) are definitely the "private" part, and the composite product is definitely the "public" part. You '''cannot'' simply choose which part of the pair to make public. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.181|108.162.238.181]] 19:54, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 
 
"The prime factors (or exponents derived from them) are definitely the "private" part, and the composite product is definitely the "public" part". This is completely incorrect. In PGP (or rather, RSA keys used by PGP), both the public and private keys consist of just the modulus '''n''' (composite product) and one of the exponents '''d''' or '''e'''. However, the "public" exponent is typically chosen to be small and with few bits set, so that encryption/decryption using the public key is fast. The private key has to be big in order to keep the search space wide. So by switching around the public and private keys you end up with a public exponent that is a 600 digit number and a private exponent that is probably the number 65537. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.243.252|198.41.243.252]] 09:16, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 
:The public and private exponents are related by the p and q values. You chose one and then calculate the other. Normally you chose the public exponent and generate the private one. It's also common practice to store p and q with the private key for efficency reasons (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_%28cryptosystem%29#Using_the_Chinese_remainder_algorithm ). So 108.162.238.181's comment wasn't too far off the mark, the public key in a typical RSA system consists of the modulus and a well-known exponent, the private key in a typical RSA system consists of p,q and various values derived from them. You could build a RSA system with symmetry in the key pair so you can chose either key as the public one but noone does because it would be substantially more computationally intensive and would give little benefit. [[User:Plugwash|Plugwash]] ([[User talk:Plugwash|talk]]) 19:47, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
 
 
Is it possible everyone overthought this?  It seems to me that it's partly a play on words.  Why would people be interested in a "public" key which simply as a matter of the name seems like something that wouldn't be hidden in the first place?  It would seem that people would be more interested in a "private" key, since it seems to be something you wouldn't be able to get. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.149|173.245.50.149]] 18:53, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 
 
:You're right in a general sense, but this wasn'the overthought. This is definitely about public/private key cryptography, and Randall has made comics about this before. His public key isn't interesting because no one wants to send secret messages to him; his private key would be very interesting because giving it out is a bad idea. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.37|173.245.54.37]] 01:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
 

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