So, browsing through YouTube, I stumbled on this video interview of John Draper

Question

So, browsing through YouTube, I stumbled on this video interview of John Draper (Captain Crunch), one of the first "hackers". He talks for about 3 minutes (until 27:48) about his home rolled encryption method that will use 1 billion bit keys that randomly change every 5 seconds.

My first thought is, is this guy full of crap? But, more specifically, if we have the capability to use 1 billion bit encryption (he claims an overhead of only 250kb to transport keys), why don't we see keys much longer than 4096? Other than the fact that it seems like an insane overkill.

Explanation / Answer

Yes, he is full of crap.

If you go to KeyLength, you can compare key lengths for different cryptosystems and see how long they're expected to be secure for.

It's just a performance vs security tradeoff that implementers make. Most people don't see the point in schlepping around megabytes of key material for cryptosystems that are expected to be secure against quantum attacks and more advanced cryptanalysis, so they certainly don't see the point in schlepping around hundreds of megabytes of key material for a cryptosystem that we expect to see die in our lifetimes.

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