On 26/08/12 16:51, Andrey Kulikov wrote:
> Talking about the bit-length of the public key data is not particularly
> helpful because it depends on whether it is in compressed format or not.
Sorry, but size of public key does not depends on size of it's
representation.
It can be compressed, Base64 encoded, etc., but it does not change
size of original data.
Well, if you are not talking about the bit length of a particular
representation, then it is no longer clear what you mean by the "size of
the original data". What size are you referring to if not the size of a
representation? Perhaps you mean the entropy (as per Claude Shannon -
Information Theory). This is the only invariant I can think of in terms
of expressing the "size" of the original data. In which case the number
of bits would be the same as the compressed representation.
As I said. Its not particularly helpful to talk about the bit-length of
the public key data.
x509 command output was mentioned only for example.
The aim was is to understand, why OpenSSL (and not only) consider size
of something as twice as less of actual size, while displaying data
itself on next line of proper size.
As I said before it is convention when talking about a key size to mean
the number of bits in the order (i.e. the size of the private key).
Perhaps the output is a little misleading if you are unfamiliar with the
convention.....but the same could be said about a lot of stuff in the
crypto world!! Personally, I think the output is reasonable.
Title for this data is 'Public key', not 'Size of private key, public
key in this certificate related to'.
What trows my programmer's ming into cognitive dissonance.
Is it bug, feature, or [yet] hidden convention?
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