identical files -> non-identical encrypted files

[Chris Walters]

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Ian Zimmerman wrote:
| I just noticed this today.  I suppose this is completely obvious to most
| readers of the list and perhaps not something they want to be bothered with;
| apalogies if that's the case.  I have a problem to solve :(
[snip]
| So I suppose gpg puts some salt probably based on timestamp in.  Can this
| be disabled?  Pretty please?

As has already been mentioned, this has nothing to do with salt.  It has to do
with the fact that the session key - used to encrypt the plaintext - is random,
so it will produce different ciphertext each time to encrypt a file.  This is a
good thing, as it makes it much harder to apply a certain type of attack on the
ciphertext.  I'm not sure why you would want to disable this security feature.
I will say that I wouldn't use an encryption program that did not use random
session keys.

Regards,
Chris

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