-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi,

Is security provided by 1024-bit PGP key sufficient against most powerful computers that are available today? Say if smoe organization spent 10 billions of dollars on a cracking machine, would it be possible to crack the keys in reasonable time?

Well, this depends on a couple of definitions. For example, how do you define "reasonable time"? The most concise answer I can give you is "we don't know". An answer that would make you feel more comfortable is that we believe that factoring a 1024-bit key using GNFS is about 300,000 times harder than factoring a 512-bit key using GNFS. This doesn't take into account increase in computer power. If you take into account increase in technology at the current rate, doubling every 18 months, then a 1024-bit key should be breakable in about 100 years. However this doesn't take into account increases in algorithms. There is no way to predict the discovery of a new factoring algorithm. In addition, there is no way to predict a computational discovery which might increase the base technology faster than the current trend. To get back to your question: If smoe [sic] organization spent 10 billions [sic] of dollars on a cracking machine, would it be possible to crack the keys in a reasonable time? Well, lets assume a P100 is 50 MIPS and costs $500. Then the $10B would purchase 20 million machines. Discounting the storage requirements (factoring a number this large will probably require on the order of hundreds of GBs of storage) and end-time processing power (unknown) required to factor a 1024-bit number, this set of machines would provide "enough" relations for a 1024-bit number in about 1.5 years per key. - -derek PS: These are napkin-style numbers, and I'm making a lot of assumptions here... I assume no responsibility if you use these numbers and they are wrong. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface iQBuAwUBMgEcrTh0K1zBsGrxAQGNaALEDEtO8/pXZPp134SBcjUqD3NO2P3siirR 8a4pA6S15fwtVDrl2ZWeZb2XL65hbhcWpZ2s6Q3eaQOvFPOiytLtfcujUFV7ef+i 9zJKgUlUFMkOP9fmhZdjZXA= =gPv4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Anonymous wrote:

Is security provided by 1024-bit PGP key sufficient against most powerful computers that are available today? Say if smoe organization spent 10 billions of dollars on a cracking machine, would it be possible to crack the keys in reasonable time?

I'd bet if they wanted it that bad they'd spend a half million on buying the key. Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@smoke.suba.com