CWD: "Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Tue Jun 4 10:54:09 PDT 1996
Yeah, we fucked up here and are getting rightfully flamed.
A more accurate way to say this would be something like:
1024-bit RSA is as hard to crack as three nested iterations of 56-bit DES.
The key length for symmetric-key cryptosystems isn't comparable to the key
length for public key cryptosystems.
And now that I'm at it, I'm now told that it was a Captain Marvel decoder
ring.
Apologies, all.
-Declan
> > 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.
>
> I sure do wish they'd get things like this a bit more accurate... Oh, well,
> I suppose it doesn't really matter...
>
>
> Jim Bell
> jimbell at pacifier.com
>
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