Pinboard (jm)
https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/
recent bookmarks from jmHow Advanced Is the NSA's Cryptanalysis — And Can We Resist It?2013-09-08T21:06:52+00:00
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/black-budget-what-exactly-are-the-nsas-cryptanalytic-capabilities/
jmAssuming the hypothetical NSA breakthroughs don’t totally break public-cryptography — and that’s a very reasonable assumption — it’s pretty easy to stay a few steps ahead of the NSA by using ever-longer keys. We’re already trying to phase out 1024-bit RSA keys in favor of 2048-bit keys. Perhaps we need to jump even further ahead and consider 3072-bit keys. And maybe we should be even more paranoid about elliptic curves and use key lengths above 500 bits.
One last blue-sky possibility: a quantum computer. Quantum computers are still toys in the academic world, but have the theoretical ability to quickly break common public-key algorithms — regardless of key length — and to effectively halve the key length of any symmetric algorithm. I think it extraordinarily unlikely that the NSA has built a quantum computer capable of performing the magnitude of calculation necessary to do this, but it’s possible. The defense is easy, if annoying: stick with symmetric cryptography based on shared secrets, and use 256-bit keys.
]]>bruce-schneier cryptography wired nsa surveillance snooping gchq cryptanalysis crypto future key-lengthshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d291541b9f3f/