4

We are new to using GPG and we have a very strange issue with decryption speed when using RSA keypairs, which are generated by using different tools (GPG for Windows, DidiSoft OpenPGP Library for .NET and SecureBlackbox).

So we have 3 RSA public/private key pairs that have the same properties (hash/compression algo, ciphers) and key size of 2048 bits and we got the following results:

100 decryption operations for each private/public keys:

  1. RSA keys generated by GPG for Windows:

    DidiSoft: 90 ms/1 decryption
    SecureBlackbox: ~420 ms/1 decryption

  2. RSA keys generated by DidiSoft lib:

    DidiSoft: 38 ms/1 decryption
    SecureBlackbox: 40 ms/1 decryption

  3. RSA keys generated by SecureBlackbox lib:

    DidiSoft: 39 ms/1 decryption
    SecureBlackbox: 39 ms/1 decryption

All the tests are using the same C# code with just the file name changed to switch public/private keys. Why is there so big difference in the execution time and what might be the cause?

Passphrase: qwerty

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2

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l1cncYyDfXHHrXo1KrN4w0V2UGD9TK+Lo5XXDKrNg18jqRt+P9OQoYw=
=Ofoe
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----


-----BEGIN PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2

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=1WOu
-----END PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK-----
Improve this question
9
  • What was the data you tried to decrypt ? Was it constant or random ? Did you try generating other pairs of keys ?
    – Nate
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 18:39
  • For getting an idea what's going on, would you be fine with posting the private keys and an encrypted message for each of those? It seems you generated testing keys anyway.
    – Jens Erat
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 19:40
  • @FrancoisRenaud-Philippon the data was random 2048 bytes. Yes I tried different pairs of keys
    – Nikola Tesla
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 20:12
  • @FrancoisRenaud-Philippon I generated 100 random arrays of bytes, encrypted them and then tried decrypting the data by using those two C# libs and each pair of keys
    – Nikola Tesla
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 20:20
  • 1
    I suggest you contact Eldos support and ask them directly. In my experience, they are quite responsive.
    – Stephane
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 8:35

1 Answer 1

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4

For those who are not familiar with OpenPGP, I have to first clarify that the RSA key (and algorithm) has a limited time performance impact over decryption speed, because the OpenPGP archive format looks like this:

session key-RSA encrypted || data encrypted with a symmetric algorithm (e.g. AES) by the session key

So, basically the speed depends (especially over large amounts of data) on which symmetric algorithm was used for encrypting the input data. Interesting part of OpenPGP is that the keys may contain symmetric algorithm preferences inside, and the encryption process may take them into account when the data was packed.

Having in mind the above paragraph, the data encrypted with the GPG RSA key may have been encrypted with different symmetric algorithm, than the key from DidiSoft OpenPGP Library for .NET and Eldos. In order to test keys equally, you will have to specify explicitly the symmetric encryption algorithm, or make sure that all keys have only one and the same preferred symmetric cipher key preference.

Improve this answer
1
  • By the way, the key pair from your post has AES-256 as the default symmetric cipher.
    – Peter Kalef ' DidiSoft
    Commented Oct 31, 2015 at 20:35

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