[145673] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: 2048-bit RSA keys
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Mon Aug 16 20:06:57 2010
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:35:47 -0700
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100816165459.5cf74611@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com>
At 01:54 PM 8/16/2010, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:42:41 -0700 Paul Hoffman
><paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> wrote:
> > At 11:35 AM +1000 8/16/10, Arash Partow wrote:
> > >Just out of curiosity, assuming the optimal use of today's best of
> > >breed factoring algorithms - will there be enough energy in our
> > >solar system to factorize a 2048-bit RSA integer?
> >
> > We have no idea. The methods used to factor number continue to
> > slowly get better,[...]
>
>He asked about "today's best of breed algorithms", not future ones. In
>that context, and assuming today's most energy efficient processors
>rather than theoretical future processors, the question has a concrete
>answer.
With today's best-of-breed algorithms and hardware designs,
there isn't enough money in the economy to build a machine
that comes close to making a scratch in the surface of
that kind of energy consumption, whether for factoring or
for simple destruction.
Basically, 2048's safe with current hardware
until we get some radical breakthrough
like P==NP or useful quantum computers,
and if we develop hardware radical enough to
use a significant fraction of the solar output,
we'll probably find it much easier to eavesdrop
on the computers we're trying to attack than to
crack the crypto.
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