known plain-text attacks

[Atom 'Smasher']

> >if one of those recipients wanted to crack the private key of one of the
> >other recipients, would it be helpful that the session-key is known?
>
> Fortunately not. Otherwise, all an atacker had to do to crack my secret key
> was creating an encrypted message to my key and his own key.
===================

is that inherent in the [asymmetric] algorithms? or is that because of the
way the [asymmetric] algorithms are implemented?


> >does it matter which asymmetric encryption algorithm is used?
>
> Not if you choose one that is currently present in GnuPG (including the IDEA
> extension). They all are not vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack.
====================

i'm wondering about the *asymmetric* algorithms. that's the part were one
would have two pieces of information to launch an attack (if such an
attack is feasible)... one would have a public-key and known plain-text
(the session-key).



        ...atom

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