WorldNetDaily on crypto, Paul Zimmermann, 116-digit keys

[Declan McCullagh]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24603
E-mail encryption made easy
2001-09-21 05:36:13

E-mail encryption made easy

...
information. It is perhaps worth noting that while there was some
discussion of pursuing PGP's creator, Paul Zimmerman, for the
violation of U.S. export controls a few years ago, there is no law
banning the personal use of encryption software.
...

The question of PGP's security is
the occasion for much debate among the sort of folks who have pale
green "monitor tans" and a virulent passion for Gillian Anderson. It
is an interesting world full of real, if esoteric, concerns about
"backdoors," Van Eck freaking and brute force attacks.
...

...
time and expense needed to crack your key. Given that it took 400
MIPS-years by an array of parallel processors to crack a 116-digit
key, the amount of computing power required to break a 1024-bit key
appears to be tremendous, even more so for the 4096-bit protection
provided by PGP.
...