On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Jonathan Ellis wrote: > > RSA algorithms are being > > broken with efforts such as www.distributed.net > > Consider that it still took distributed.net 250 days to break a 56-bit > key... distributed.net didn't break a 56-bit RSA key, they broke a 56-bit RC5 key and a couple of 56bit DES keys. The RSA keys used in PGP start at 256 bits and go up to 1024. You can't compare a 56-bit RC5 key to a 56-bit RSA key, RC5 and RSA are different algorithms and the key sizes aren't directly comparable. I'm sure that the 56-bit RSA key used by netrek could be cracked in minutes with the hardware most people have at their disposal. > > Does expiration of RSA copyright have any impact on ease of > > cracking RSA key size? > > No. It was a patent expiration. Copyrights no longer expire.