[Gllug] DSA/RSA

[Nix]

On 30 Aug 2007, John G. Walker spake thusly:
> So, eventually, the difference between RSA and DSA is that RSA
> encrypts, but DSA merely signs?

All digital signing consists of encryption at the root, so there's no
difference in that respect. It's just that asymmetric algorithms like
RSA and DSA are generally computationally intensive enough that you
don't want to be encrypting megabytes with them: just encrypt a session
key for a faster symmetric cipher such that only someone with the secret
key can decrypt it, anda then use the symmetric cipher from then on.
Except for the part where this relies on the security of more encrption
systems, it's as secure as using the asymmetric algorithm throughout, and
one hell of a lot faster.
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