2047 bit keys in PGP

[Bill Frantz]

At 19:52 1/3/96 -0500, Rick Busdiecker wrote:

>Another point to realize is that PGP uses a combination of ciphers.
>When encrypting, the RSA key is only used to encrypt an IDEA key.
>That IDEA key is used to encrypt your message.  Somewhere between 2048
>and 4096, you're making the RSA key stronger (harder to brute force)
>than the IDEA key.  At that point, the extra time that you're using
>for super-big RSA keys is totally wasted.

To nitpick:  Getting the RSA key will give you ALL the IDEA keys.  That is
probably worth 200-10000 times the effort.


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Bill Frantz                   Periwinkle  --  Computer Consulting
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