On 3 Jun 96 at 22:19, Declan McCullagh wrote:

(By Brock Meeks / brock@well.com / Archived at http://www.cyberwerks.com/) CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1996 // Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port: [..] That key length stuff is just so much gibberish to those playing without a scorecard, so let me drill down on it for you. Basically, the longer the key length, the harder it is for a message to be broken by "brute force" automated attacks. Current U.S. laws prohibit the export of any encryption device with a key length longer than 40-bits, or roughly the equivalent of Captain Crunch decoder ring. For hardcore math types, I'm told that a 1024-bit key length is 10 to the 296th power more difficult to break than 40 bits.

Too bad he got caught up in the gibberish. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl@unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.