American Samizdat

Tuesday, March 26, 2002. *
NSA possibly has broken most PGP keys. Lucky Green:
a 1024-bit RSA factoring device can likely be built using only commercially available technology for a price range of several hundred million dollars to about 1 billion dollars. Costs may well drop lower if one has the use of a chip fab. It is a matter of public record that the NSA as well as the Chinese, Russian, French, and many other intelligence agencies alloperate their own fabs.

Some may consider a price tag potentially reaching $1B prohibitive. One should keep in mind that the NRO regularly launches SIGINT satellites costing close to $2B each. Would the NSA have built a device at less than half the cost of one of their satellites to be able to decipher the interception data obtained via many such satellites? The NSA would have to be derelict of duty to not have done so.(...)

In light of the above, I reluctantly revoked all my personal 1024-bit PGP keys and the large web-of-trust that these keys have acquired over time.

posted by jerry at 8:00 AM
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