[vox-tech] Which cipher to use?

[Ryan]

On Monday 03 June 2002 10:41 pm, Bill Broadley wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 10:25:23PM -0700, Ryan wrote:
> > > Hrm, I'd test them yourself, I've seen numerous benchmarks,
> > > particularly in sci.crypt.  It depends quite a bit on your
> > > implementation and hardware.
> > >
> > > I'd guess blowfish would be fastest since it was designed to be fas=
t
> > > with 32 bit cpu's, avoiding things like the DES proclivity for bit =
ops.
> >
> > I poked around a bit, and it looks like AES and twofish use the fewes=
t
> > CPU cycles.....
>
> Interesting, I found a AES comparison, but it didn't include blofish.

blowfish wasn't even considered for becoming the AES standard. It's slowe=
r=20
then the current AES standard.

> > > A much faster method might be to zero out your swap on shutdown.
> >
> > Wouldn't be zeroed out on a dirty shutdown.
>
> True, linux can usually avoid those, at least with a UPS to insure
> someone doesn't cut power to achieve that end.

Doesn't stop someone from flipping the power switch or unpluging it

> > I'm able to memorize fairly long passwords of random garbage... My
> > password for stuff I want secure (pgp private key, disks) is over 200
> > bits of random garbage (counting 6.5 bits per char)
>
> Sounds great, although if someone throws your ass in jail till you
> give up your key, you will have a difficult choice.  To easily destroy
> the key in a unrecoverable way makes it harder to be held in contempt o=
f
> course since you can't get the key back even if you want to.

I thought the 5th amendment would prevent that. Am I just ignorant?