[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: Cryptography Key Length

[Steve Baker]

Leroy Tennison wrote:

> Rats, I was reading an article on the Web yesterday where there was a 
> warning about 1024 bit keys becoming insecure in a few years.  Did I 
> bookmark or otherwise note it's location?  Of course not!

It was on Slashdot a few days ago - but they hadn't succeeded in 
breaking 1024 bit encryption - they'd used three large
cluster-computers to factor JUST ONE 1024 bit number - taking
eleven months to do it! (THey said it was "A Century of Computer
Time")

OK - so that means that maybe two or three agencies in the entire
world could decrypt just one email at a time - taking almost
a year to do it and using a bunch of the fastest machines
imaginable to run it on!

If that makes you worry - I'd like to know what it is you've done
to make you think that one of your messages might be that important!

Even with Moore's law speeding up that process by a factor of
two every 18 months, it's going to take an awful lot of those
doublings before we have to be concerned about this as a practical
matter.

The article is here:

   http://actualites.epfl.ch/presseinfo-com?id=441