ietf-dkim
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ietf-dkim] agenda item on upgrading hash algorithms?

2006-02-23 18:25:10

On 23 Feb 2006, at 1:54 PM, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

We know that 4096 bit keys will not fit into a standard DNS record.


But Phill, we don't *need* 4096 bit keys before 2009.

A DKIM key isn't a CA root key. It signs a message to take responsibility for it. The semantic lifetime of a given signature has an upper bound of somewhere between a week and a month. According to NIST's estimates, a 3k key has 128 bits of strength. For DKIM purposes, a 2k key changed once a year is great. DKIM is ones of the places where even paranoids like me don't twitch at 1k keys. If someone goes and builds one of Adi Shamir's optical crackers, they can do a single key a year for $10M.

If there's so much money in abusing unauthenticated email that this is a threat, then we have problems cryptography can't solve. Yeah, yeah, by 2020 or 2030, we'd better be on ECC. And by then, there won't be IP issues. Unless of course someone makes practical quantum computers, but that's a different issue.

        Jon


_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>