Plain Elgamal keys

[Werner Koch]

Maitre Jedi Yoda <mjediyoda@multimania.com> writes:

> I don't realy understand the FAQ about the key-size.
> If I usea plain Elgamal key what (an why) size should I chose?
>  
> Is Plain Elgamal a complete alternative to RSA ?

Yes, but DSA/Elgamal is better.  It does not make sense to use a
signing key of more than 1024 bits as the probability of breaking this
one is believed to be even to the one of breaking a 160 bit hash.  And
we don't have a really greate hash algorithm today.  I know that the
NSA is working on one ... bit they didn't comment on when they will
release this peace of work - and then we need some time for the
academic cryptographers to scrutinizes this algorithm, so that we
don't have SHA-0 problem.  Well, it may take some years.

Combining differen hash algorithms to yield a larger disgest may be a
way, but there is not much research on this issue and it may make the
hash weaker.

I really suggest to stick to DSA/ElGamal for now.  BTW, PGP is not
able to handle these keys nor to create them.

-- 
Werner Koch at guug.de           www.gnupg.org           keyid 621CC013