[46338] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: 1024-bit RSA keys in danger of compromise (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Len Sassaman)
Mon Mar 25 22:56:42 2002
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 19:56:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Len Sassaman <rabbi@quickie.net>
To: <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <GPEOJKGHAMKFIOMAGMDIMEGNKJAA.deepak@ai.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.QNWS.0203251940350.22341-100000@thetis.deor.org>
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On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Deepak Jain wrote:
> If its a big surprise that any key of any arbitrary length can be cracked in
> finite time and in finite resources, I think people haven't been thinking
> about the information presented in the security books out there. Most of the
> estimates that say anything is "unbreakable" don't recognize that Moore's
> law is real, and accelerating...
That is a falicy. Moore's law is most certainly not accelerating -- in
fact:
1965-1990 Moore's law stated that the number of transistors per square
inch on integrated circuits (and therefore, the speed) doubles every 2
years. The pace has since slowed down a bit, but appears to be holding
steady at doubling every 18 months (1995-present).
http://www.physics.udel.edu/wwwusers/watson/scen103/intel.html
However, this trend cannot continue forever. In 1997, Moore predicted we
would reach the physical limits on transistor miniaturization somewhere
around 2017. Whatever the actual date, we will need a break-through in
computing to continue to obtain performance increases over time past this
point.
--Len.
