Rick Moen via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> writes:
Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
When someone says "I need 16K RSA keys", don't they really mean "I want EC keys"?
Because, like, RSA needs to be a lot longer than EC to provide the same security level.
I absolutely take you seriously on such things, Trent, but wonder if you can refer me to background materials about cryptographic strength. (Certainly, I am behind my times on readings concerning ciphers.)
I don't have cites handy; I was just repeating what I heard somewhere. The two things I remember (from when OpenSSH got EC support) is that 1. The closed community (NSA/military types) have used EC for about as long as the open community have been using prime factorization (RSA). 2. a 2KiB RSA key is as strong as a <much smaller> ECDSA key. That's why ssh-keygen has 256/384/521 ECDSA & can't do 4KiB ECDSA.