Europe votes to end data privacy

The Guardian ^ | Friday May 31, 2002 | Stuart Millar

[elfman2]

" Umhmm. 512-bit is trivial to break, PGP goes 1024 to 2048 bit, and that's an open method"

Umhmm, I think that is addressed in the link that you're responding to, including reference to an architecture design to crack 1024 bit keys in less than a minute. Who knows what really exists so I'm in disagreement with your dismissive boast that "ROFL. Brute force doesn't get you anywhere.""

[No.6]

"Bernstein's machine, once built, will have power requirements in the MW to operate, but in return will be able to break a 1024-bit RSA or DH key in seconds to minutes."

There's something about those powers of 2, though... oh yea, that's right, they're exponential :)

So use 2048-bit keys as the post you referenced suggests. Or 4096, or 8192, or whatever level makes you comfortable. Now for most of us who might want to use a public key present PGP is limited to 1024 bit (it's the old command line one that was more robust) but if you actually cared about your data (like a company might be if its competitors were snooping) and not just encrypting everything just to make life difficult for snoopers, you could use more since your recipient would expect it.

Of course if everyone is encrypting, even if its all breakable with some effort, it's not feasible to scan through everything. Thus EU is putting a stop to that possibility.

Or, to put it another way, the fact that they are bothering to pass laws like this is an indicator that breaking crypto is not yet incidental to various governments.

[elfman2]

"Or, to put it another way, the fact that they are bothering to pass laws like this is an indicator that breaking crypto is not yet incidental to various governments"

Or that they'd rather just spend the 10 billion instead of 20 billion next year to update their equipment.