Schneier on Bernstein factoring machine

[bear]

On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Anonymous wrote:

>Bruce Schneier writes in the April 15, 2002, CRYPTO-GRAM,
>http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0204.html:
>
>> But there's no reason to panic, or to dump existing systems.  I don't think
>> Bernstein's announcement has changed anything.  Businesses today could
>> reasonably be content with their 1024-bit keys, and military institutions
>> and those paranoid enough to fear from them should have upgraded years ago.
>>
>> To me, the big news in Lucky Green's announcement is not that he believes
>> that Bernstein's research is sufficiently worrisome as to warrant revoking
>> his 1024-bit keys; it's that, in 2002, he still has 1024-bit keys to revoke.
>
>Does anyone else notice the contradiction in these two paragraphs?
>First Bruce says that businesses can reasonably be content with 1024 bit
>keys, then he appears shocked that Lucky Green still has a 1024 bit key?
>Why is it so awful for Lucky to "still" have a key of this size, if 1024
>bit keys are good enough to be "reasonably content" about?


Because Lucky Green is a well-known paranoid who has no business
requirement to put up with second-class crypto for the sake of
compatibility and can reasonably control other methods of accessing
his important stuff.  Conversely, your typical businessman has few
or no business secrets not known to at least half-a-dozen employees
and after trusting that many people, better crypto would add
essentially nothing to the businessman's security.

For a handy metaphor, you can think of a kilobit-keyed cipher as
a potentially weak link in Lucky's security (worth the attention)
and probably the strongest link in a typical businessman's security
(not worth the attention).

			Bear



---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at wasabisystems.com