Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Alan MacHett" <machett AT ibiblio.org>]

Thomas,

For that day-to-day, safe-as-a-phonecall stuff, don't bother.

For the important stuff, use something non-US-commercial and open-source,
say PGP.

For messages you don't ever want broken, I have but three words:  one-time
pads.  Alas, there's no easy implementation, especially for email or voice
communication.

Also bear in mind that the best crypto is still only as good as the user. 
If you leave an unencrypted copy lying about, or leave your passphrase
taped to your monitor, then don't bother in the first place.

-Alan

In reference to Scott's message:
>
> On Jul 27, 2004, at 1:20 PM, Shea Tisdale wrote:
>>
>> During the RSA contest, the peak key rate for the RC5 64bit attack was
>> 270,147,024 kkeys/second.  At that pace, it would have taken 770 days.
>>  To
>> equate that key rate to common computer power, it would take 32,504
>> 800 Mhz
>> Apple Powerbook g4 laptops or 45,998 AMD Athlon XP machines running at
>> 2ghz
>> to sustain that rate.  Based on the Athlon processor, that is
>> approximately
>> 211,820,790 mips or 106,225,380 mflops (106.23 Tflops) of power.
>>
>> The fastest supercomputer in the world is the Earth Simulator.  It is
>> rated
>> at 35.86 TFlops.  Even with that enormous capability, that is only 1/3
>> the
>> speed required to crack RC5 64bit in 770 days.
>
> Of course, there is always the backdoor hack. You know about the
> backdoor, right Brain? THEY built it into everything...
>
> --
> Pinky
>
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