From: feotus@yabbs
To: rattler@yabbs
Subject: re: rsa
Date: Wed May  4 10:03:05 1994
First off, they didnt do it on one machine, they just spread it out to a 
bunch of different volounteer machines, which added up alot of proccessing 
time.
 
Also it was a RSA129 key, now take however many bits are in that, and 
subtract aht from 1024 and then take 2 to that power and that's how much 
more difficult it is to break the 1024bit key than the RSA129.
 
for example, if you have a 400bit key, and you crack it, then you want to 
try and crack the 1024bit key, you would have to expend 2^624 times more 
power to do it.  NOw that is a very large number, considering the number 
of estimated moleculs in the universe is less than that.
 
So I say even with the NSAs computing power, which theyget to measure in 
ACRES 8), it would take a long time to crack a 1024 bit key.  Tho one of 
the smaller PGP keys are suggested to be crackable in one year or so if 
the NSA dedicated all of their processing time to it.
 
 
The thing is now, that it is so daunting to do that, they eitehr knock you 
off real quiet like, or they get your passwd to your se3cret key.  If it's 
going to take them that long tim decrypt it, I'm sure they will justget 
you out of the loop some other way.