I just finished reading Simon Singh’s The Code Book, and I got the impression that PGP was basically uncrackable, and more or less always will be. However, the book was written 20 years ago, so, is this still true?
In: Technology
PGP was based on several ideas like public key encryption being used to encrypt a session key for a symmetric key which was used to encryption the data. It’s like using a lock within a lock but the session key is meant to be as hard to crack as the original public key.
It also uses things like hashing to electronically sign documents as a form for you to confirm the original.
The principles are still used but specific algorithms or key lengths will have changed from 20 years ago. With the increase of computing power the Data Encryption Standard (DES) protocol became much easier to crack as it only has a 56 bit key. A stop gap of encrypting data three times (tripleDES) was used before a replacement algorithm, AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).
PGP has evolved into a web standard which is implemented by the GNU Privacy Guard as free software. See https://gnupg.org/
The only perfect encryption I know is with a one time pad, which requires overheads like getting a key to you securely, but if I can get a key to you securely why cant I send the message to you securely and public key encryption gave ways for someone to encrypt data with your public key that only you could decrypt with your private key.
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