On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 09:37:05PM +0700, Oskar Sandberg wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 09:21:04AM -0400, Travis Bemann wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 05:02:25PM +0300, Henry Hemming wrote:
> > > > Use 256 bit symmentric encryption and 4096 asymetric, that should be
> > > > safe even if they "they" have quantum computers (well, as long as
> > > > they are smaller then 4096 qubits).
> > > So, if you take a look at the development of quantum computers sofar,
> > > their size follows pretty nicely moore's law, so assuming the current
> > > trend continues we will reach 4096 quantum bit computers aprox in 24
> > > years.
> > > 
> > > Therefore we indeed should leave room for crypto update in freenet :-)
> > 
> > They assumed that it would be fixed later when they wrote software
> > that used 2 digits for years.  Even though Y2K didn't turn out to be
> > what it was cracked up to be, they should have used at least 8 bits if
> > not 16 or 32 bits to store years.
> 
> That is not comparable. The threat of quantum computers, if they can
> really grow exponential speeds, makes current asymetric ciphers completely
> useless. Sure, we could go with 16384 bit keys and sit an wait for half an
> hour while our nodes handshake, just to give us 26 years instead of 22.
> 
> The fact is we HAVE to hope that this will get fixed later (or that the
> threat is not as bad as it's cracked out to be - which is the worse
> alternative since there are many good uses for quantum computing), or we
> simply can't use asymetric ciphers at all.

Actually, quantum computer cannot crack one-time-pad encryption.  If
they try to crack one-time-pad encrypted data, the will end up
producing *all possible blocks of data* which are of the same length
as the encrypted data.  Quantum computers turn the infinite monkeys
smashing on keyboards into reality.

-- 
Travis Bemann
Sendmail is still screwed up on my box.
My email address is really bemann at execpc.com.
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