[9front] Re: obsolete cryptographic algorithms

[magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org]

Michael Forney <mforney@mforney.org> writes:

> ori@eigenstate.org wrote:
>> Protocols still use them.
>
> What about the ones that aren't used by anything in 9front? I was
> poking around libsec a while back and noticed that dsa and elgamal
> are completely unused.
>
> Any reason to keep them around? Is there external plan9 software
> out there that uses dsa or elgamal from libsec?

THERE IS REALLY NO SUCH THING AS AN OBSOLETE CRYPTOGRAPHIC ALOGRITHM.
I set that in caps because it demands emphasis.  There are many old
archives, network devices, and other systems which may (and do) employ
older cryptographic technologies.  Removing support from 9front would
remove the ability to read/interact with legacy systems.  I encountered
this problem when some "obsolete" ciphers were removed from the Linux
cryptoapi.  I ended up having to re-implement one of them as a command-
line utility in C, just so I could access data written using a prior
version.  As long as old machines, old software, and old data exists,
there is really no such thing as an obsolete cryptographic alogrithm.