Re: Slicing and dicing

[[e-mail] (Jim Gillogly)]

Phil Karn sez:
>    How likely are we to generate a weak key by random accident? Is it
>    worth worrying about?

Ted T'so responds:
...
> Note that this is also only a problem if we some how end up
> re-encrypting the encrypted packet again, such as in applications where
> you might be using two layers of ESP for some reason.  In those cases,
> the probability of trouble would be (20 * 2**-56 * 2**-56 * 20**-64), or
> (20 * 2**-176), or 2 * 10**-52.

Putting this in perspective, there are about pi * 10^7 seconds per year,
so if everybody on earth (10^10, in round numbers) were changing keys 10^10
times per second, somebody would expose a stream once in 10^25 years.

I think I can live with that.

	Jim Gillogly