RSA 1024 ridiculous

[Remco Post]

Andrew Berg wrote:
> Robert Hübener wrote:

>> The work for the RSA-part of the algorithm is always the same: It
>> only has to process either the hash of the message/file or the key
>> for the symmetric cipher.
> I don't completely understand. Does this mean that
> encryption/signature time is only dependent on the hash, and that RSA
> key size doesn't matter in this regard?
> 

there is a hash calculated over the message, the longer the message, the
longer it takes to calculate the hash (given a particular hash algorithm).

Then the hash is encrypted using your secret key (in RSA), the longer
your key, the longer this step takes (again given a particular hash alg.).

So, a longer key has relatively little impact on the total time, esp.
when signing long messages. (any yes we do this because public/private
key crypto is quite cpu intensive).

Also, because of this, there is a session key generated for each
message, and that key is encrypted using recipients public key when
encrypting a message. So in order to achieve good message security, you
need both a strong rsa key and a strong session key.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post

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