3 ms·
Friendly reminder you can entirely disable elliptic curve algorithms in your sshd_config and generate rsa keys larger than 4096 bits, 8192 or however large you
by kelsey98765431 3y ago
Friendly reminder you can entirely disable elliptic curve algorithms in your sshd_config and generate rsa keys larger than 4096 bits, 8192 or however large you like work just fine.
I have never trusted EC crypto because of all the magic involved with it, a sufficient reason to move from RSA has never been presented with compelling evidence as far as I am concerned. I do not care that it is faster, i prefer slow and secure to fast and complicated. It's a lot easier to explain RSA and why it's secure than the mile long justifications on curve crypto. The issue doesn't need to be in the algorithm, if the implementation is sufficiently difficult that works just as well as an intentionally misdesigned algorithm.
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah I never bought into the EC thing much either. It's supposed to be safer against quantum but it's also a lot less proven.
- lambdafu 3y agoActually, with currently common key sizes, ECC up to 384 bits will fall to QC before RSA with 1024 bits, because fewer bits means fewer qubits needed. The main disadvantage of RSA is the structure of finite fields, which allows specialized solutions to factoring (number field sieve). We do not know similar structures for elliptic curves, so for those we only have general attacks, thus allowing shorter key lengths.
- kbolino 3y agoThe benefit of EC is not speed, it is much smaller key sizes. Roughly speaking, an RSA key has to be 8 times as large as an EC key for the same security level.