PGP problems

[Bill Wood]

A properly designed encryption isn't 'broken' except when
someone discovers your key, then you are broken, but not anyone
else, not the code. The statistics of the encryption define how
many *random* tries are required to discover the key. If these
statistics hold, then the encryption is 'properly designed'.
Any encryption can be 'broken' by finding its key, the question
is how long it takes. And that depends on how fast candidate
keys can be tried - how fast the computer is doing the
analysis. PGP is like its name - pretty good. It's enough
encryption that Big Brother isn't going to randomly scan your
email. But if they have a good reason to look at you ... .
Change your encryption key periodically.

It is probably true that the NSA can find the key to any
encryption, given sufficient time. So if they are interested in
you, you will be broken. But if the NSA is interested in you,
you have a whole new set of complicated problems.

w3

+++++

On Thu, 03 Aug 2000 20:40:58 -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:

>On Thu, 03 Aug 2000 17:04:08 -0400 (EDT), Larry Ebbitt wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 02 Aug 2000 18:40:13 -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:
>>
>>>They can't break PGP (yet) as far as I know. If they can't break it,
>>>they can't read your mail. They are stopped.
>>
>>By stopping them, I meant the use of carnivore in general.
>>I'm really not terribly concerned if they read *my* email.
>
>And again, if you (and others) use PGP, you have stopped them. Mail
>scanning becomes useless if people start using encryption. Start
>using PGP and you are helping "stop them."
>
>
>-- 
> Trevor Smith          |          trevor@haligonian.com
> PGP public key available at: www.haligonian.com/trevor
>
>
>
>
>

Humane and intelligent people excuse lies, repression, 
slave labor, and mass extermination when they are done 
in the name ... of the working class.

Thomas Sowell, Marxism