From: Dido Sevilla <dido.sevilla@...>
Date: 2006-08-29T15:27:13+09:00
Subject: Re: asymmetric encryption options

On 8/29/06, snacktime <snacktime@gmail.com> wrote:
> The openssl implementation won't encrypt a block larger then the size
> of the key.  I think I will just stick with my current approach
> though, as it seems to be the path of least resistance, and the
> performance is acceptable.

Well, a common problem with asymmetric ciphers is that they tend to be
problematic when encrypting large amounts of data. They often cause
data expansion and are extremely slow; I imagine that using an
asymmetric cipher to encrypt everything would result in your data
being at least twice the size of what you put in (whether you used RSA
or ElGamal), and I think that it would probably be even slower than
what you're doing now as well. It would probably also be prudent, as
Francis suggests, to add a digital signature to your data; I've found
that authentication of data is quite often more important than keeping
the data confidential.