On Sat, Feb 01, 2014 at 12:00:30 -0200, André Nunes Batista wrote:
Isn't it the case where the randomness of the key/password composes the
overall quality of the crypto substitutions in such a way that 4096bit
keys would necessarily provide better protection against cryptanalysis
when compared to dozens of random, valid characters?
As far as I understand it, that is correct: A 4096bit key gives you
2^4096 possibilities, while a string of n random characters selected
from a set of, let's say, 50 members (letters, numbers, special
characters) has 50^n possible values. To break even with the 4096bit
key, such a random-string password would therefore have to have a length
of n=4096*ln(2)/ln(50) characters, which is about 725.