From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 94 11:16:33 PDT
To: trollins@debbie.telos.com (Tom Rollins)
Subject: Re: Unofficial Release
In-Reply-To: <9406221754.AA05954@debbie.telos.com>
Message-ID: <9406221816.AA03231@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Tom Rollins says:
> I don't need an 8000 bit key, but, I don't want the pgp-key-server
> barfing on a 4096 bit key that I feel I need.
> How can you put a price on someones life. You don't know
> there situation. (think about OJ and fooling around with his wife)

Yup, you have it on me. I guess it is important to lower the
possibility of someone cracking your key by brute force from lower
than the odds that all the oxygen atoms in the room you are in will
spontaneously end up on the wrong side of the room to lower than the
odds that all the oxygen atoms in the world will end up on the wrong
side of the planet. After all, we are fooling with lives. Yup. That
infinitessimal safety margin is important. After all, someone who's
got billions of dollars to spend is very likely to waste it on doing
nothing but cracking your key -- listening in on your computer's
electromagnetic emissions, tapping your keyboard, or beating you up
would all be too complicated when there is an infinitesimal chance
that billions of dollars could crack your key directly.

> Tim May says:
> >If this was tongue in cheek, I missed it. Nobody in their right mind
> >will try a brute force attack on a 1024-bit key, let alone a 1200- or
> >2000-bit key. Unless there are flaws in PGP and/or RSA we haven't
> >heard about.
> 
> So you or I won't try the crack. But then there are all those people who
> are being paid from tax dollars to do nothing else but crack.

And you know, who knows? Maybe they are in fact concealing more
computers than you could build with all the silicon in the solar
system in Fort Meade. Those feds, they are superhuman, you know?

Jeesh.

Perry