Re: [9front] auth/rsagen: bump bits to 4096

["Frank D. Engel, Jr." <fde101@fjrhome.net>]

This is the recommendation from NIST:

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-57pt1r5.pdf

A 2048-bit RSA key has a "security strength" of 112 bits (page 54).

NIST considers encryption with a security strength of 112 bits to be 
acceptable protection through 2030 but not beyond that (page 59).


See also: 
https://www.gradenegger.eu/en/which-key-sizes-should-be-used-for-certification-bodies-and-certificates/

That document indicates that a German government security organization 
considers less than 3000 bits with RSA to be unacceptable even now.


Of course, RSA is known to be vulnerable to an algorithm which could be 
implemented on a sufficiently large quantum computer; while such a 
computer is currently believed to be over a decade away, there have been 
known cases of full encrypted exchanges being captured and stored for 
longer periods of time than that to be decrypted after the technology 
improves to be able to crack the data.  Depending on the sensitivity of 
the information, this could be a factor for some.


There are groups making various efforts to develop new algorithms 
designed to be safe against quantum computers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography



On 11/26/23 19:42, ori@eigenstate.org wrote:
> Quoth Frank D. Engel, Jr. <fde101@fjrhome.net>:
>> Presumably 2048-bit RSA is good until 2030 - but that is less than 7
>> years away and keys created today may still be in use long past that time.
> This is getting closer to a useful description of why,
> but can you explain *how* you concluded that these keys
> are good until 2030?
>
>
>