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Besides, symmetric schemes tend to perform better. Hence the idea of using a public-key scheme like DH for key exchange and then switch to symmetric crypto like AES.

Always avoiding public-key isn't really possible unless you have some sort of secure channel to agree on a key for some communication. But then again, if you have that channel, you might just as well communicate through that.

When encrypting files locally though, there is absolutely no reason I can think of to use public-key cryptography.



> When encrypting files locally though, there is absolutely no reason I can think of to use public-key cryptography.

So that you don't lose your decryption key just because your computer was encrypting when it was seized?

Of course, if the weaknesses are sufficient, then that's irrelevant, but it's certainly "a reason".




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