From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 20:18:30 -0800 (PST)
To: snow@smoke.suba.com (snow)
Subject: Re: A question about PGP Pass phrases.
In-Reply-To: <199611130715.BAA00511@smoke.suba.com>
Message-ID: <199611160415.XAA01631@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Tim May & I had a conversation about this in which Tim posted the
great analogy of searching galaxies in the possible passphrase space.
The thread covered the question pretty well.

Adam

(Tim, do you have a copy of your post?  I can't think of the right
search terms for Altavista)

snow wrote:
|      A very basic question then:
| 
|      What _would_ be a passphrase of sufficient length and entropy? 
| 
|      I would assume that the phrase "Off we go, into the while blue yonder"
| would not be sufficient, but what about "0ff they went, in'ta the black viod"?
| 
|      I would guess that either would be difficult to out right guess, but the 
| second would be considerably less likely. Not as unlikely as 
| "KIB&^%(*h89hgv&*hjV6*ibHF&90n", but a hell of a lot easier to remember.
| 
|     It has been several months since I read the PGP users guide, and I don't 
| remember any discussion of that in it, but I could be wrong. 


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume