GPG and multiple recipients

[Tom Metro]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> Don Levey wrote:
>> ...gpg generates its own key, encrypts the data with that, and then
>> the recipient's public key is used to encrypt the data key...
> 
> In fact, this is what always happens, one recipient (R)  or n recipients
> R0..Rn. GPG makes a random key K, encrypts your message M with K, then
> sends K(M)  R0(K) ... Rn(K).

Right...because public key encryption is expensive (CPU intensive), so
they use a symmetric cypher to encrypt the payload, and use PKI to
encrypt just the symmetric key.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
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