Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-security (520 mails)
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Re: [suse-security] What's the length of ssh keys?
- From: Olaf Kirch <okir@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 09:18:42 +0200
- Message-id: <20020702091842.A31261@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 06:23:45PM +0200, Praise wrote:
> A friend of mine told me that 1024bit keys were broken, and he advised me to
> use 4096bit keys...
> I think he is confusing ssl with ssh.
> Do you have similar information on this?
There is a paper by Dan Bernstein that discusses how much computing power
(and money) it would take to build something that's able to brute force
a 1024 bit RSA key.
Based on this paper, I believe, some people recently drew the conclusion
that you can build such a thing for 1 billion USD which should be well
within the budget of several US government agencies. None of this is
proven, and pretty much of this is based on speculation.
This is, to my knowledge, what this entire "stop using 1024 bit RSA
keys" discussion is based upon. Whether you consider this a serious
threat greatly depends on your personal paranoia quotient when it comes
to said US government agencies.
My personal opinion is, there's no need to panic, and throw away
all your keys. If you do create a new key, it is a good idea to
choose a bigger key length if the software supports it.
Olaf
--
Olaf Kirch | Anyone who has had to work with X.509 has probably
okir@xxxxxxx | experienced what can best be described as
---------------+ ISO water torture. -- Peter Gutmann
> A friend of mine told me that 1024bit keys were broken, and he advised me to
> use 4096bit keys...
> I think he is confusing ssl with ssh.
> Do you have similar information on this?
There is a paper by Dan Bernstein that discusses how much computing power
(and money) it would take to build something that's able to brute force
a 1024 bit RSA key.
Based on this paper, I believe, some people recently drew the conclusion
that you can build such a thing for 1 billion USD which should be well
within the budget of several US government agencies. None of this is
proven, and pretty much of this is based on speculation.
This is, to my knowledge, what this entire "stop using 1024 bit RSA
keys" discussion is based upon. Whether you consider this a serious
threat greatly depends on your personal paranoia quotient when it comes
to said US government agencies.
My personal opinion is, there's no need to panic, and throw away
all your keys. If you do create a new key, it is a good idea to
choose a bigger key length if the software supports it.
Olaf
--
Olaf Kirch | Anyone who has had to work with X.509 has probably
okir@xxxxxxx | experienced what can best be described as
---------------+ ISO water torture. -- Peter Gutmann
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