On 10/10/2011 5:44 PM, Jerome Baum wrote: > But remember Murphy's(?) law! -- (I mean the one about doubling computer > power every 18 months -- are there two Murphy's laws? Confused now...)
Moore's Law. For reference, a 40-bit key is breakable today by just about anyone, a 64-bit key is breakable today by people with access to significant computational resources (hundreds of machines), and it's plausible to believe fantastically wealthy adversaries can break 80-bit keys. In 1998, EFF's DEEP CRACK exhausted a 56-bit keyspace in roughly 24 hours at a cost of $250,000. Assuming Moore's Law holds true, that means it could be built today with equivalent performance for about $1,000. A 64-bit keyspace is only a factor of 250 harder: a DEEP CRACK/64 could theoretically be made at a cost of $250,000. An 80-bit keyspace is a factor of 50,000 harder, more or less, putting the price of that at $12 billion, somewhere in there. This is really rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it passes my sniff test. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
