Using gpg for french law

[Anthony David]

"John C. Place" <jcplace@attglobal.net> writes:

> On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 03:09:57PM +0100, Simpson, Sam wrote:
> > Blowfish can accept key sizes from 1-byte (totally insecure) up to
> > 448-bytes (overkill :)).
> > 
> Ok, so does that mean our friend from France is out of luck because it
> is capable of going to what... a 3584 bit Encryption key? Also why I
> have your attention what benifet is twofish? Why keep it at a 128 bit
> session key? Symmetric keys usually compress faster then Public, right?

In order...

What is capable of 3584 bits? Generally for a public-key algorithm
it is a total waste of effort.

Twofish is designed for and submitted as an AES candidate
See http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/ .There are other candidates
that each have their merits (except possibly MARS)

A 128bit session key is far beyond what is required for security against
a brute-force attack. Somewhere around 90bits is sufficient. Check out
how long distrubuted.net has been spinning cycles for to crack a 64bit
RC5 key.

Forgive my ignorance, but what does your compression of keys question
refer to?
 
> With that in mind why not max out what blowfish is able to do. Have you
> heard of GnuPG supporting big keys? PGP will do 16K now. I know it is
> almost rediculus that we need that key I was nust wondering it is was
> compatable.

Why bother. PGP doing 16kbits is, as I said, a total waste of effort and
is more for marketing than practical use.
 
> 
> > The strength of Elgamal is not based on the difficulty of factoring but a
> > similar problem (the discrete log problem).
> > 
> Ahh I stand corrrected, the manual let me to believe it was a factoring
> problem.
> 
> > 128-bit Elgamal keys could be trivially broken. 
> > 
> At least I score 1... OK a half :-)
> 
> > Hope this helps a bit?
> > 
> pun? :-)
> 
> Thanks
> John

-- 
=========================================================
Gambling: A discretionary tax on  | Anthony David
those who were asleep during high | Systems Administrator
school mathematics classes        |

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