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Diffie-Hellman for the layman (borisreitman.medium.com)
21 points by boris1 1877 days ago
5 comments
1cvmask 1875 days ago
Professor Diffie was the teacher of Taher Elgamal who helped create the Elgamal algorithm and SSL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElGamal_encryption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElGamal_signature_scheme

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taher_Elgamal

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loudouncodes 1875 days ago
Um, he starts in 1976, then says ‘21 years later’ and he’s talking about today? He’s 20 years off in his opening premise...
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boris1 1874 days ago
Thanks, gonna fix it.
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boris1 1868 days ago
I've now implemented folder encryption. If you encrypt folder 'foo', you get the file 'foo.encrypted'. When you decrypt it using the same tool, you get file 'foo.zip' which you download and uncompress into a folder 'foo'.
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davidhyde 1875 days ago
> “ When WhatsApp was pressured to leave a backdoor into the encryption, it said “no” but instead agreed to log and report all dubious communication before it is encrypted. ”

Huh, I did not know that!

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avmich 1875 days ago
So this doesn't unfortunately work with a man in the middle?

That is, how email exchange can be guaranteed to work properly, and MITM won't insert his email in the middle of the process?

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spekcular 1875 days ago
Yes, exactly. This is why real-world systems additionally include some kind of authentication protocol.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack#Authe...

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boris1 1874 days ago
The check digits solve the MITM problem. You should compare them by another channel than email, such as text message. This is called "Short Authentication String" (SAS).
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