Safety of the key and it's length

Werewolf werewolf6851 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 26 15:36:50 CET 2009


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Michał Gołębiowski wrote:
> I generated a gpg key using 'gpg --gen-key' (using GPG 1.4.6). What
> concerns me is that no matter how strong agorithm would I choose, it
> doesn't affect the size of the public & private key. It's probably ok,
> but I wonder - how safe is the private key having exported ASCII
> signature sized circa 2600 bytes? Public key is similar in size.
> 
> I see many people have keys sized 4800 bytes and even 10x bigger. How to
> generate such longer keys? Is the size connected with GPG version I use?
> Is my key secure? I used a passphrase sized about 40 symbols, all
> English letters not making any word/phrase/etc., so it's quite long.
> 
> I would appreciate Your help.
> 

Try either putting the line
enable-dsa2
in your gpg.conf file or on the commandline add the command
gpg --enable-dsa2 --gen-key

Or instead of DSA key, choose to make a RSA key.

All three those options will then open a key size query dialog for you.

- --

Werewolf
=====- http://www.nyx.net/~mdkeith/ -====
 GPG key F52A14B4 with following fingerprint
35CD 0611 2F71 BC17 5C53  29A2 5F5A 4309 F52A 14B4
=====- http://spandex31095.tripod.com/ -==

Book: "The important thing is the spices.  A man could live on enough
packaged food from here till judgment day as long as he has
enough rosemary."
				--Episode #1, "Serenity"
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