On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 01:37:06PM -0400, Nick Mathewson wrote:
Filename: 248-removing-rsa-identities.txt Title: Remove all RSA identity keys Authors: Nick Mathewson Created: 15 August 2015 Status: Draft
Summary
With 0.2.7.2-alpha, all relays will have Ed25519 identity keys. Old identity keys are 1024-bit RSA, which should not really be considered adequate. In proposal 220, we describe a migration path to start using Ed25519 keys. This proposal describes an additional migration path, for finally removing our old Ed25519 keys.
Did you mean "RSA" in that last phrase?
For backward compatibility, we should consider a default that refers to referring to Ed25519 relays by the first 160 bits of their key. This would allow many controller-based tools to work transparently with the new key types.
Hmmm. What trouble could one make by choosing an Ed25519 key that starts with another router's 160-bit fingerprint (or the first 160 bits of another router's Ed25519 key)? I wonder what the complexity is of finding a valid private/public key Ed25519 pair where the public part starts with a given 160 bits. I would not be surprised if the answer were 2^80. I guess that's about the complexity of factoring the RSA-1024 key in the first place, but I wouldn't want to encourage controllers to stick with displaying only 160 bits of the key once the RSA keys are deprecated.
- Ian