Pete Stephenson: > On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:24 PM, shm...@riseup.net <shm...@riseup.net> wrote: >> what are the factors involved in creating such discrepancies with folks' >> public key lengths ? > > As far as I can tell, the two major factors that affect the size of > public keys are: > 1. Key length. (That is, a 4096-bit key will be larger than a 2048-bit > or 1024-bit key.) > 2. Number of signatures on the key. A brand-new key will be > considerably shorter than one that has accumulated numerous signatures > from other people.
that's makes sense; now i understand why Zimmerman's and callas' public keys are going through the ceiling as to who michael vario is it remains to be seen ! > >> are public, private, and key pairs in general stronger/safer (what ever >> that may mean) if observing their public keys are many monitors high or >> have they gone to extreme measures in something in particular ? > > Key length does have an effect on security: 2048-bit keys are larger > and harder to brute-force than 1024-bit keys. The same applies to 3072 > and 4096-bit keys compared to 2048-bit ones, though there is a point > of diminishing returns. > _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
