From: rarachel@prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 09:41:27 PDT
To: schirado@lab.cc.wmich.edu (No Taxes through No Government)
Subject: Re: Un-Documented Feature
In-Reply-To: <9407020254.AA24485@lab.cc.wmich.edu>
Message-ID: <9407031628.AA01687@prism.poly.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> Questions:
> 
> 1) In non-mathematical terms, if possible, what difference does this
>    make in terms of security?

None mathematically.  A friend of mine (denaro09@darwin.poly.edu) has an
interesting thought on this.  If the NSA does have any method of screwing
RSA in any way, it's probably optimized for the common key lengths for PGP.
ie: 512, 1024, etc.  So he uses a 1023 bit key.  That one bit less may be
unsecure for him, but the idea is still sound.  Maybe a 1025 bit key would
give them less of an advantage.  Even so this is all speculation.  We don't
know what the NSA knows...