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Bruce Schneier is one of the most qualified people: |
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|
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"Triple-DES has a 112-bit key; there isn't enough silicon in the galaxy |
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or enough time before the sun burns out to brute-force triple-DES" |
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|
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http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9808.html#descracker |
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|
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- steve |
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-----Original Message----- |
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From: Zhang Weiwu [mailto:zhangweiwu@××××××.com] |
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Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 2004 3:23 p.m. |
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To: gentoo-server@l.g.o |
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Subject: [gentoo-server] easy explanation of the strength of 3DES (and |
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perhaps also IDEA)? |
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|
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Hello. I googled around with no luck. I wish there could be some very |
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easy explanation of cipher strengths so that I could answer questions |
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like 'how strong 3DES is' to novice users. Most results I could find are |
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too technical / mathematical. I want very simple explanation like this: |
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|
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128 bit IDEA is very strong cipher. Normally, take a piece of encrypted |
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data, it would need one Pentium Xeon 2GHz personal computer xxxx years |
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to decrypt the data, this is as long as the age of the earth (or human, |
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or USA, whatever). Even if you could use the most powerful computer now |
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one the earth abcde (replace abcde with the computation power), you need |
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xxx (a number) of them to decrypt it in 5 years. |
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|
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The above sort of explanation is not precise, and will not be accepted |
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by any engineer / software documentation, but it's enough to let the |
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users (who definitely not wishing to become expert or have a PhD on |
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math) get the feeling that the data is almost safe. |
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|
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Another question: technically, how does IDEA compare to 3DES on cipher |
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strength and CPU usage? Is 3DES more safer than IDEA and cost more CPU |
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time? |
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