Firewall Wizards: Re: R: strong encryption for Europeans

[Bennett Todd <bet () rahul net>]

1997-11-25-11:29:08 Arjo Mukherjee:
> Even though the VPNs are using shorter length keys than some may
> consider SECURE (eg 40 instead of 128), some of the products are
> actually exchanging modified keys rather frequently (say in the
> ballpark of tens of minutes). Hence, it may not be that easy to break.
> In other words, the keys are not kept constant, thus it makes it a bit
> harder to crack.
That certainly buys you a little extra protection against a successful
and sustained session hijack, but it does nothing useful for protecting
the secrecy of a logged session; since breaking 40-bit keys takes only
hours, the hypothetical intruder can discover what you sent and received
reasonably quickly. And it it takes hours today it'll take minutes Real
Soon Now (tm).

-Bennett