29.4 Setting up the Service

29.4.4 Authentication and Encryption

The default authentication mechanism is RSA, based on public key cryptography. This scheme has separate keys for encryption and decryption. With sufficiently large keys it is not possible to guess the decryption key given the encryption key. This allows one to publicly provide the encryption key so that other users or machines can encrypt their message with it. Then only the holder of the private decryption key should be able to decrypt the message. This private key can be optionally protected with a passphrase for additional security.

Several encryption algorithms are available. The default, and most secure, is idea.

Unix System Administration - 8 AUG 1996

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