Re: 1024 bit key considered insecure (sshd)

From: Karsten W. Rohrbach (karsten@rohrbach.de)
Date: 08/29/02


Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 15:51:18 +0200
From: "Karsten W. Rohrbach" <karsten@rohrbach.de>
To: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>


Perry E. Metzger(perry@piermont.com)@2002.08.29 09:30:17 +0000:
>
> "Karsten W. Rohrbach" <karsten@rohrbach.de> writes:
> > Perry E. Metzger(perry@piermont.com)@2002.08.29 02:08:27 +0000:
> > > I do. If someone with millions of dollars to spend on custom designed
> > > hardware wants to break into your computer, I assure you that
> > > increasing the size of your ssh keys will not stop them. Nor, for that
> >
> > you missed the concept behind crypto in general, i think. it's not about
> > stopping someone from accessing private resources, but rather making
> > that approach to make access to these resources /very/ unattractive, by
> > increasing the amount of time (and thus $$$) an attacker has to effort
> > to get access.
>
> I would have thought spending at least hundreds of millions off
> dollars and (as importantly) at least months of time would have been
> considered "unattractive" enough to encourage other methods of getting
> at your data like breaking in to your physical location. Silly me. I
> guess I missed the concept behind crypto.

wasn't meant as a personal assault. defining attractive/unattractive
strongly depends on the content you want to protect, sure. of course, at
some point gaining physical access becomes more attractive.

tracking the evolution of computing machinery nowadays, implementing
cryptanalysis in hardware becomes cheaper and faster at an amazing
speed. my wild guess is, that through the upcoming broad availability of
software programmable hardware that is available today, attacks to
crypto in general will become very cheap in a timeframe of months.

regards,
/k

-- 
> "It says he made us all to be just like him.  So if we're dumb, then
> god is dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side." --Frank Zappa
WebMonster Community Project -- Reliable and quick since 1998 -- All on BSD
http://www.webmonster.de/ - ftp://ftp.webmonster.de/ - http://www.rohrbach.de/
GnuPG:   0xDEC948A6 D/E BF11 83E8 84A1 F996 68B4  A113 B393 6BF4 DEC9 48A6
REVOKED: 0x2964BF46 D/E 42F9 9FFF 50D4 2F38 DBEE  DF22 3340 4F4E 2964 BF46
REVOKED: 0x4C44DA59 RSA F9 A0 DF 91 74 07 6A 1C  5F 0B E0 6B 4D CD 8C 44
My mail is GnuPG signed - Unsigned ones might be bogus - http://www.gnupg.org/
Please do not remove my address from To: and Cc: fields in mailing lists. 10x

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Relevant Pages

  • Re: X509 question
    ... X9.42 DH and OAEP with AES. ... certificates for an algorithm that provided no advantages over RSA, ... and no hardware (either crypto accelerators or smart cards) supported it ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Hyper-Threading Vulnerability
    ... You're asking the crypto ... >> to avoid a microarchitectural problem with Intel's HT implementation. ... The cache line information leak is just a information leak ... of the hardware as well as the software. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Wikipedia "Cryptography" reaches Featured Article status
    ... John K. Taber wrote: ... I wish to comment solely on the question of DES in hardware or software. ... The regulations implement the more general enabling legislation, the Arms Export Control Act, if I remember its title correctly. ... There are examples of encryption systems being broken by bypassing the crypto so the message is sent in plaintext. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Wikipedia "Cryptography" reaches Featured Article status
    ... I wish to comment solely on the question of DES in hardware or software. ... The idea behind the Act is to give the Executive bargaining ... broken by bypassing the crypto so the message is sent in plaintext. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: software crypto is useless
    ... > in runtime, your keys, passwords, and signatures, etc. all become doubtful. ... Each security module, software as well as hardware, has ... Software crypto can be ...
    (sci.crypt)