[557] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: 40 bit encryption: Missing the point
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Muuss)
Wed Mar 29 22:17:55 1995
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 95 18:29:28 EST
From: Mike Muuss <mike@arl.mil>
To: Marc Andreessen <marca@netscape.com>
cc: www-security@ns1.rutgers.edu
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> (b) Key length for public keys (e.g. RSA or PGP) and for
> symmetric ciphers (e.g. DES or RC4) are very different.
> DES with 56-bit keys is moderately weak, but RC4 at 128 bits
> (for example) is tremendously strong, whereas RSA with 512
> bits is currently reasonable and RSA with 1024 bits is good.
Yes, I'm aware of that. *smile* It didn't strike me until a few
hours later that my lighthearted apples-n-oranges comparison there might
be misleading. Thanks for providing the explanation.
Best
-Mike
