how long the key is

Stewart V. Wright swright at physics.adelaide.edu.au
Tue Apr 26 18:23:18 CEST 2005


G'day Mike,

* mike.salehi at kodak.com <mike.salehi at kodak.com> [050426 11:04]:
> I always thought the length of key and its subordinate is the same but now
> I got this
> pub  1024D/17EEDBD7 1999-06-09 xxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx <operations at x.com>
>       sub  4096g/E10A5B9F 1999-06-09
> 
> so is it 1024 or 4096


The primary key is a signing DSA type 1024 bits long, the encryption
ElGamal subkey is 4096 bits long.

As they are doing two different jobs the lengths need not be the same.

Have a look at
  http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html#AEN26
for a brief comment on the lengths.

I'm sure there are other more elucidating documents available if you
look around a bit.


Cheers,

S.
 
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