Re: [TLS] Comparative cipher suite strengths

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

At 1:13 PM -0400 4/23/09, Daniel Brown wrote:
>Table 4, provides a list of algorithm security lifetimes,

That's your interpretation. NIST labels the table "Recommended algorithms and minimum key sizes", and precedes it with "Table 4 provides recommendations that may be used to select an appropriate suite of algorithms and key sizes for Federal Government unclassified applications." If you want to ignore that and call it "a list of algorithm security lifetimes", that's fine, but maybe don't attribute that interpretation to NIST without further backup.
>
>which I liberally interpret as saying 2^80 computations may be feasible for a concerted adversary, in 2010 and perhaps 2^112 operations may be feasible by 2030.

See above.

>... but perhaps NIST was ... or perhaps NIST was ... or perhaps NIST is ...

Another possibility is to take NIST's words as what they intended to say.


--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium