An 8-bit 1/2 MIP smart card can generate 1024 bit RSA key pair in about 20 seconds and 512 bit key pair in less than 5 seconds.
Since this isn't typically done in the checkout lane this is certainly an acceptable time/security trade-off by many lights. A device that can't generate a key pair probably has other more compelling shortcomings as a security token. Cheers, Scott -----Original Message----- From: Bill Frantz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 3:42 PM To: Bill Stewart; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Welome to the Internet, here's your private key At 10:20 AM -0800 2/4/02, Bill Stewart wrote: >There are special cases where the user's machine doesn't have >the CPU horsepower to generate a key - PCs are fine, >but perhaps Palm Pilots and similar handhelds are too slow >(though a typical slow 33MHz 68000 or Dragonball is faster >than the 8086/80286 MSDOS machines that PGP originally ran on.) >Cash machines may be too slow, but they normally run symmetric crypto. >A smartcard-only system probably _is_ too limited to generate keys, >but that's the only realistic case I see. It may depend on the public key system you are using. Where you have to search for numbers which have certain mathematical properties (like with RSA), then you can indeed use a bunch of CPU. For systems like DSA, where the private key is in essence a random number, there is not searching, and key generation is a lot faster. Cheers - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The principal effect of| Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | DMCA/SDMI is to prevent| 16345 Englewood Ave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | fair use. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
