Security of PGP if Secret Key Available?

[Mark M.]

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On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Gary Howland wrote:

> On Jun 3,  2:36, "Robert A. Hayden" wrote:
> > However, I got to wondering about the security of PGP assuming somebody
> > trying to read my PGPed stuff has my 1024-bit secret key.  ie, if I have
> > it on my personal computer, and somebody gets my secret key, how much
> > less robust has PGP just become, and what are appropriate and reasonable
> > steps to take to protect this weakness?
> 
> If the secret key is available then an attacker knows the length
> of p & q.  Admittedly this will not usually help matters much,
> but I still feel that the lengths of p and q should be encrypted
> with the passphrase - perhaps in PGP3.0? (Derek?)

I don't see how knowing the exact lengths of p and q will help matters much.
I don't think it will speed up the factoring time, and it won't make brute-
forcing the passphrase any easier.

- -- Mark

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