Re: Ada & Encryption / Compression

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <osn2shxb7e.fsf@ted.vigra.com>, David L Brown <dbrown@ted.vigra.com> writes:
> John Howard <jhoward@sky.net> writes:
> 
>> Forget about doing your own RSA encryption.
>> 1)  RSA is patented.  You'd have to wait for the patent to expire.
> 
> Agreed, and this might be enough to stop you.  RSA claims that you can
> only use their implementation.

In former years, RSA did not license the patent for your own
implementation other than with a very steep minimum fee (on
the order of 10 million dollars, according to rumor).   That
is now different, and prices for your own implementation are
down to something reasonable (in my view).

>                                 You could probably call the C just
> fine from Ada.

In my opinion calling RSA's BSAFE toolkit from Ada is much nicer
than calling it from C.  Of course I might say that about a lot
of toolkits, but even though it is written in C, BSAFE avoids
such C-isms as null-terminated strings.

> Don't confuse the RSA algorithm with the contest that RSA is holding
> to crack a particular key.  They are witholding this key, not because
> it has to do with the algorithm, but because it is part of a contest.

Ah, that explains the original comment. I couldn't understand the basis.

Of course the currently publicized contests sponsored by RSA are
not for the RSA algorithm at all (where an ongoing contest ran
for 10 years) but for block ciphers, in particular DES and RC5.
Although RC5 is a development or RSA Data Security Inc. (patent
applied for) it is not the "RSA" public key algorithm.  It is a
secret key algorithm (the "other kind"), as is DES.

Larry Kilgallen