Recommended key size for life long key

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 09/08/2013 04:02 PM, Filip M. Nowak wrote:
[snip]
> "Breakthroughs in factoring have occurred regularly over the past
> several decades, allowing us to break ever-larger public keys. Much of
> the public-key cryptography we use today involves elliptic curves,
> something that is even more ripe for mathematical breakthroughs. It is
> not unreasonable to assume that the NSA has some techniques in this area
> that we in the academic world do not. Certainly the fact that the NSA is
> pushing elliptic-curve cryptography is some indication that it can break
> them more easily."**
> 
I would think the NSA would have two teams, that might work together at
times. One is interested in breaking the encryption of those they deem
to be enemies. The other is making encryption mechanisms that are as
difficult to break as they know how, for the use of our own secret
services, state department, and so on.

So perhaps the snooping division is pushing elliptic curve technology
because they have a technique for breaking those that they have not
published and that has not yet been leaked.

But the other division is developing some superior technique, such as
hyperbolic curves (I made that name up; it has nothing to do with
reality) that is at least an order of magnitude more difficult to break.
For use by any government agency that has secrets to keep but must
communicate from place to place, or from time to time. Some might need
public key encryption methods, some might manage with symmetric key methods.

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