Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 10:45:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Kris Kennaway <kris@hub.freebsd.org> To: Mark Ovens <mark@ukug.uk.freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: (fwd) CNN - Crypto expert: Microsoft products leave door opentoNSA - September 3, 1999 (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909071040530.68426-100000@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <19990907182859.A283@marder-1>
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On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Mark Ovens wrote: > Hasn't the US govt recently been generous and allowed 56-bit > encryption to be exported? ISTR that "export" versions of IE now > have it, or is M$ a special case? This is still almost trivially breakable thesedays - refer EFF's "Deep Crack" hardware. > Anyway, who cares what the US govt thinks, says, or does about > encryption? We all have PGP which is as much as 512 (or is it 1024?) > bit. Asymmetric cryptography like DH/RSA (used in PGP) doesn't directly compare to symmetric cryptography (DES, blowfish, etc) in terms of key bitlengths: a 512-bit asymmetric key is roughly as "strong" as a 56-bit symmetric key (e.g. DES) (give or take an order of magnitude, I don't have figures handy). 1024 is considered to be reasonably secure against attack for the next few years, but if you want to be secure in the longer-term you should be using 2048-bit keys or larger. Kris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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