On Friday, February 10, 2012 2:34:58 AM UTC-8, Simon Tatham wrote:
> Higorineth Ancalimae < > wrote:
>
> > Do you plan to add it ?
>
>
>
> I'd be happy to accept a good-quality patch if someone else submitted
>
> one, but it's not currently high on my list of things to spend my own
>
> effort on. So far I've only heard of two people (you and the user I
>
> previously mentioned) who are interested in using it.
>
> --
>
> Simon Tatham "Happiness is having a large, warm, loving,
>
> <> caring, close-knit family in another city."
It seems GPGAgent may fill this gap, but as there's some concern about the long-term security of RSA, elliptic curve keys are recommended by people who seem to know (e.g. Whitfield Diffie, of course).
While attacks against 4096 bit RSA keys are theoretical, AES 256 is a relatively standard security default and is equivalent to an ECDSA key of 512 bits (521 is the maximum current option in OpenSSL 0.9.8x), which is equivalent to an RSA key of 15,360 bits. The longest RSA key OpenSSL will generate is 4096, and that already generates some compute load. Achieving AES256 equivalent security is not possible without switching to ECDSA.
It is not just the French NCSA that is promoting a transition to ECC, but also the US NSA:
http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/elliptic_curve.shtml
Personally, I think it is time to make ECDSA support a priority.