Secure Messaging in Ubuntu

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 08 September 2013 19:30:37 Tony Arnold did opine:

> Gene,
> 
> On 08/09/13 16:16, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > 2048 bit, 256 8 bit chars, is today a small key however, so I would
> > suggest that a new key std be established, as much to accommodate the
> > variety without duplication, by squaring it to 65536, which would
> > then be a 524,288 bit key.  That, FWIW, was assumed in the above
> > total.
> 
> Such a large key would be made up of the product of two quite large
> prime numbers? I don't know the details but I believe there is a largest
> known prime number or at least few known very large prime numbers (and
> they seem to get sparser the larger they are), in which case having an
> extremely large key may reduce the choice of keys and thus make it
> almost trivial to crack? Or am I missing something?
> 
> Regards,
> Tony.

In that regard, I had forgotten that its the product of 2 primes, and they 
do get farther apart.  Someone, not me as my math is not THAT good, should 
do an analysis.  I would think there would still be lots of Prime 
candidates, and the more primes, the harder it should be to crack.  Its 
probably already been done, and my google foo isn't working well enough to 
find it.

What about the ellipticals?  ISTR seeing someone claim 2 or 3 years ago 
that it was several orders of magnitude harder, or has that been rendered 
moot by now?  I really don't know.

Cheers, Gene
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