Article View: sci.crypt
Article #2833Key Length (was Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?)
From: Carl Ellison
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 23:11
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 23:11
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In article <726201680.AA00090@ship.wimsey.bc.ca> Stu@f729.n153.z1.ship.wimsey.bc.ca (Stu) writes: >Assuming an 8 letter password, and say about 70 choices for each letter ( 26 >uppercase, 26 lowercase - yes it's case sensitive - 10 for numbers + some >punctuation etc ) hmm... 70^8 is... 5.765*10^14. So the spooks that are >tailing you would have to try that many passwords. This calculation has a problem. It assumes that each 8-letter password is equally likely...so that a person would use "1pJ1NpxM" as readily as "BillyJoe". The only way I know to do that is to have a program assign passwords and allow no choice by the user. -- -- <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>> -- Carl Ellison cme@sw.stratus.com -- Stratus Computer Inc. M3-2-BKW TEL: (508)460-2783 -- 55 Fairbanks Boulevard ; Marlborough MA 01752-1298 FAX: (508)624-7488
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!transfer.stratus.com!ellisun.sw.stratus.com!cme From: cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Key Length (was Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?) Date: 5 Jan 1993 23:11:23 GMT Organization: Stratus Computer, Software Engineering Lines: 16 Message-ID: <1id4irINNs2n@transfer.stratus.com> References: <726201680.AA00090@ship.wimsey.bc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: ellisun.sw.stratus.com