The IESG has approved the following document: - 'Determining Strengths For Public Keys Used For Exchanging Symmetric Keys ' <draft-orman-public-key-lengths-08.txt> as a BCP This document has been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an IETF Working Group. The IESG contact person is Steve Bellovin. Technical Summary This document sets out an approximate equivalence between key lengths for public key algorithms (i.e., RSA) and symmetric ciphers such as AES. More precisely, it provides guidance on the proper public key modulus size to use to achieve a comparable level of protection as a given symmetric cipher. Working Group Summary The recommendations here differ somewhat from NIST's numbers. However, all such recommendations are at best approximations to the truth, given that they rely on future advances in hardware and algorithm development. The differences are thus not believed to be significant. Protocol Quality Steven M. Bellovin reviewed this document for the IESG.
