DH Key

[David Shaw]

On Jun 23, 2011, at 4:05 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:11:37 -0600, Lane Brooks <lane at brooks.nu> wrote:
>> I need to generate a 2048-bit PGP version 6.5.3 or later and of the type
> 
>> DH/DSS public key.
> 
> For reasons I've never been able to understand, PGP insists on calling
> Elgamal "Diffie-Hellman," and insists on calling the Digital Signature
> Algorithm ("DSA") the Digital Signature Standard ("DSS").

It's one of those historical oddities.  Back in the 1990s, Cylink offered the PGP company a free patent license if PGP called Elgamal Diffie-Hellman instead.  Cylink was pushing that name for marketing reasons.  The name stuck in PGP for the simple reason that it would confuse people if they suddenly saw their keys change type after upgrading to a newer version of PGP.  Note that this is only true in the PGP Desktop - PGP command line calls it Elgamal.

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

David