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Will hfinney remailer go to 1024 bits?

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Anonymous

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Jul 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/25/96
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Just wondering if the anonymous remailer hfi...@shell.portal.com
will go to something bigger than its current 510 bits???

510 seems a bit small for security now-a-days........

Anonymous

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Jul 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/26/96
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Hal

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Jul 30, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/30/96
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nob...@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) writes:

The reason why I use only a 510 bit key is because I don't want to
mislead people about the security provided by this remailer. It is
running on a Unix system belonging to Portal, an Internet Service
Provider in the San Francisco Bay area. I am an ordinary customer of
this ISP and I run the software as part of my email filter. At any given
time there may be dozens of people logged on to this multi-user system.

Because the software is fully automated, it has to be able to decrypt
messages on the fly as they come in. That means that the key has to be
available to the software, which requires the pass phrase to be embedded
in the remailer scripts. Anyone who was able to get root privileges on
this machine would be able to acquire both the remailer's encrypted
secret key and its pass phrase, which would reveal the key. This is
surely far easier and less expensive than the effort which would be
required to break the remailer key by factoring. So in fact I don't
think the key size, even at 510 bits, is the weak link in the security
provided by this remailer.

(Note - other remailers may operate by different principles so this
discussion should not be assumed to apply to all.)

Hal Finney
hfi...@shell.portal.com

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