At 07:05 PM 2/9/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: ...
an NSA internal one; in the unlikely event that Moore's law lets us double processing power 100 times in the next 150 years, that means a 1500-bit key could be crackable. So 2048 bits is certainly more than enough for _your_ lifetime.
That depends on what current and near-future medical technology can do to extend the lifespan of humans. If your assumption is that most folks younger than about 50 will be dead in 75 years I suspect that you're in for a nasty surprise.
That is my assumption, and being wrong would be a highly pleasant surprise.
The reason I posted those cc:'s regarding such research is enough that current estimates of key strength based on human life times need to be re-evaluated.
If Moore's law plus algorithm improvements can give us a 2**150 increase in processing power over the next 200 years, and I'm around to see it, I'll be very surprised. (Or I'll be posthumously surprised, if I'm not around.) On the other hand, if that's true, we'll be in something like the nanotech singularity, where eavesdropping will make up for any remaining difficulty in key cracking, as I'd also discussed. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639