Re: Newbie question on encryption keys

On Jul 10, 12:22 pm, Mark Shroyer <usenet-m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-07-10, rohan...@xxxxxxxxx <rohan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I am a little confused about creating encryption keys. How exactly
does one create a 128, 512 or 1024 bit key? If I use an encryption
software, does the encryption key mean the password? If so, is it
enough if I create a 128/8=16 char password or even 512/8=64 char
password?

How to specify key length depends on what kind of software you're
talking about. Usually it's set as some sort of command-line
argument or in a config file, or it may be prompted for
interactively. Consult the man page for details.

Dealing with public key encryption systems, the actual encryption
key generally has nothing to do with the password which you may or
may not be asked to provide. When you create a keypair with, e.g.,
GPG or OpenSSL, the key parameters themselves are pseudorandomly (or
randomly, depending on your hardware) generated in the program. The
password is only used as the basis for a /symmetric/ key with which
to protect the generated private encryption key; this is done to
make it more difficult for an attacker to obtain your private key,
should the file it is contained within fall into the wrong hands.

Let us know which particular software you're dealing with if that
didn't completely answer your question.

Mark

--
Mark Shroyerhttp://markshroyer.com/

Thanks Mark. Basically, I found some software that does AES and
Blowfish encryption on text and other files. I know that AES uses 256
bit keys for encryption and it asked me to give a password. I wasnt
sure if I needed to give a 32 char password because it did the
encryption even with smaller passwords. So how do I know what was the
key used for encryption? And how do I communicate that key to the
recipient of the encrypted file?

.

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