[46435] in Cypherpunks
Re: 2047 bit keys in PGP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Wed Jan 3 23:03:23 1996
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 19:44:49 -0800
To: Rick Busdiecker <rfb@lehman.com>,
"Michael C. Peponis" <mianigand@unique.outlook.net>
From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
Cc: Laszlo Vecsey <master@internexus.n>, mianigand@outlook.net,
cypherpunks@toad.com
At 19:52 1/3/96 -0500, Rick Busdiecker wrote:
>Another point to realize is that PGP uses a combination of ciphers.
>When encrypting, the RSA key is only used to encrypt an IDEA key.
>That IDEA key is used to encrypt your message. Somewhere between 2048
>and 4096, you're making the RSA key stronger (harder to brute force)
>than the IDEA key. At that point, the extra time that you're using
>for super-big RSA keys is totally wasted.
To nitpick: Getting the RSA key will give you ALL the IDEA keys. That is
probably worth 200-10000 times the effort.
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Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting
(408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
