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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade
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To: Crabbe who wrote (5962)11/15/1997 8:49:00 PM
From: Morpher  Read Replies (1) of 16892
 
Using more than 56 bits to encrypt a message is considered "strong" but in reality, 1024 bits are needed to assure secrecy.

Ouch, I'd expect something better than this from the Scientific American. Note the source though: TED LEWIS is author of The Friction-Free Economy: Marketing Strategies for a Wired World, published in October by HarperCollins. Not much of a cryptography expert.

What he appears to be doing and what you're doing for sure is implicitly comparing apples and oranges. Basically, there are two major cryptosystems: conventional (symmetric, secret key) ciphers and public key cryptography (used for e-mail). Common symmetric algorithms are DES, triple DES, RC2, RC4 (the one that's used when you look at Datek's pages), IDEA, and Blowfish. Most common public key algorithm is RSA, used by PGP.

The error that you (and Ted Lewis) make is comparing the size of the conventional algorithm's key to the size of the RSA key. That leads to wrong results. It is said for example that breaking a 128-bit IDEA key is about equal to breaking a 3100-bit RSA key.

Of course my statement that 128-bit RC4 key is currently unbreakable unless there is some classified subtle weakness is correct. That's the algorithm that is used by browsers when accessing Datek's pages and that's what we were talking about. Sorry Rodney, you're not winning this argument.
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