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The public key blob doesn't consist of just the numbers that make up the public key: it begins with a header that says “this is an SSH public key”. The repeated prefix encodes this header. RFC 4254 specifies the encoding of public key in SSH key format. The "ssh-rsa" key format has the following specific encoding: string "ssh-rsa" mpint e ...

Only two people can communicate with each other with the chat program. No group conversations. This is fairly limited, but let's admit. The people will be communicating over the internet. So, an insecure channel. OK. The chat program will just handle basic characters, numbers and symbols that are on a standard US keyboard. This is to keep ...

Based on skimming the relevant RFCs, I can't find any outright problems. Key derivation from the password is performed via PBKDF2, and best I can tell, the choice of cipher is left up to the implementation. As long as a good cipher is chosen, a truly random 30-character passphrase consisting of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and digits should have ...

Currently, your protocol has a fatal design flaw by only considering an attacker who could manipulate the communication. You mentioned the two security properties confidentiality and integrity and you implicitly expect some kind of deniability by using a OTP and its properties. But your protocol ensures no entity authentication or perfect forward secrecy so ...

In the common configuration of SSH, the session keys (and a session ID) will be negotiated using the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and then authenticated by the server, using its private key to sign all the exchanged data (which is then checked by the client). The public key authentication of the client happens after that, when the actual connection is ...

So, you have several requirements. Multiple parties share ownership of a part of the key. Parties will use human memory to store their parts. The passphrase must be a minimum of 30 characters. The first requirement definitely sounds like a job for Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm, where you have to bring together at least $m$ of $n$ shares in order to ...

How do cryptography in SSH(2) work? This is a very broad question. If you're interested in the details, then read the relevant RFCs that describe the SSH protocol. In particular: RFC 4253 - The Secure Shell (SSH) Transport Protocol RFC 4252 - The Secure Shell (SSH) Authentication Protocol Does key authentication in SSH(2) protect from MitM by ...

What is the main difference of the three? Can I use only one of them for everything (e.g. GPG for SSH authentication) GnuPG is an free and open-source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. Symantec PGP is a proprietary implementation of the OpenPGP standard. The OpenPGP standard defines ways to sign and encrypt information (like mail, other documents ...

As for the conspiracy theory issue. You should consider that the NSA deemed AES fit to protect National Security Systems and National Security Information. http://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/ No one knows if AES will ever be broken apart from the people who actually broke it already so either the NSA believes AES is secure or they know it's ...