Silk Road forums

That's the fingerprint of your key. A public key looks like this:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
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=i8Ra
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----


Did you follow the GPG4USB tutorial? It tells you how to export your public key (copy it to the clipboard), which you can then paste into a forum post.

OpenPGP is a standard and a collection of algorithms.

Right, instead of PGP key space I should have said RSA, DSA, Elgamal, etc.

I read a lot but I can not figure out where to download a PGP version for windows 7

Try this: http://32yehzkk7jflf6r2.onion/gpg4usb/

stewpudaso's message was encrypted with pine's key. A lot of people do that because it's in the second post, but pine hasn't logged in in a long time.

You're talking about a symmetric key, like a 256 bit AES key. Read what kmf wrote about PGP keys.

Now that I think about it, the PGP key space must be smaller since 768 bit PGP keys have been broken but even 128 bit AES has not.

That makes sense as to why PGP keys are being cracked so much faster. If 88 bits is 25 times harder, then 512 bits is about 145 times harder, and that would take log2 145 = 7.2 doublings of computational power. Realistically the doubling rate is more like 18 months, so 7.2 * 1.5 = about 10 years, which is what we're observing.

If we can crack a 1024 bit key today and computing power doubles every year, then we could crack a 2048 bit key in about a thousand years, since the key space is 2^1024 times bigger than for a 1024 bit key.

The thing is, our ability to brute force keys appears to be increasing faster than Moore's Law. Assuming a doubling rate of one year, we would only be able to brute force 1 more bit per year, 10 bits per decade. The largest cracked key size is increasing much faster than that.

Nightcrawler said that 512 bit keys were cracked in 2002 and we're close to cracking 1024 bit keys now. That's an increase of almost 500 bits per decade, which is why 2048 bit keys won't be safe for more than 20 or 30 years, and that's assuming no disruptive technology comes along.