GPG's vulnerability to brute force

[Peter Lebbing]

On 2014-05-15 14:30, gnupg-users at gnupg.org wrote:
> Leo called it 10^5, Rob called it 10^3. If you save 63 bitflips on a
> total of a million, that doesn't change the final numbers in the 
> least.
> Pull out some hairs and you still have a beard: 10^3 - 63 = 10^3.
> Incidentally, we went from 100 nuclear warheads to 3 to 1000[3].

Whoops, I mixed up one million and one thousand. Always makes me
realise I don't do physics calculations often enough, and feel a bit
ashamed :). Let me slightly redo that:

Leo called it 10^5, Rob called it 10^6. Let's take the more
conservative one for argument's sake. If you save 63 bitflips on a 
total
of one hundred thousand, that doesn't change the final numbers in the
least. Pull out some hairs and you still have a beard: 10^5 - 63 = 
10^5.
Incidentally, we went from 100 nuclear warheads to 3 to 100,000[3].

Peter.

[3] Or a million depending on whether 2^128 is better approximated by
10^38 or 10^39, when you're really nitpicking. Which you shouldn't do
when discussing exponential complexity. Let's say that with
exponential complexity, your fingers are too large to pick a nit.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at 
<http://digitalbrains.com/2012/openpgp-key-peter>