On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, IT3 Stuart B. Tener, USNR-R wrote: > Everyone now is saying 3DES is strong, but will we consider it > strong in 3 years? Even if the algorithm is never found to have been > cracked? Of course we will, by then we will all have 12GHz processors, > and 3DES will seem the same joke that DES is now. really? 3DES a joke in 3 years. i'll take you up on that. read the report by matt blaze, etc. on how long key length must be to protect info for a given number of years against brute force given the increase in computing horsepower and given a specific budget: http://www.crypto.com/papers/keylength.txt here is a summary: "Therefore, to provide adequate protection against the most serious threats --- well-funded commercial enterprises or government intelligence agencies --- keys used to protect data today should be at least 75 bits long. To protect information adequately for the next 20 years in the face of expected advances in computing power, keys in newly-deployed systems should be at least 90 bits long." - brett Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
