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Date:      Fri, 22 Dec 2000 15:40:15 -0600 (CST)
From:      Keith Ray <aphex@nullify.org>
To:        freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   IPSec + Racoon: pre-shared key length
Message-ID:  <977521215.3a43ca3fea068@nullify.org>

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I have finally been able to get Windows 2000 and FreeBSD to talk using IPSec + 
ISAKMP.  However, I am not sure what the appropriate length of the pre-shared 
key should be.  The best I could come up with is as follows:

Use a password generator that creates passwords with upper/lower case letters 
and numbers.  This gives me 62 possible combinations.  3DES uses 192-bit keys 
for a keyspace of 2^192.  So the problem is 62^x = 2^192.  Take the log of both 
sides and divide to get: 32.2.  Therefor, a 33 length password should provide a 
slightly greater keyspace to search than the 3DES keyspace.

Am I doing this correctly?  Also, if neither machine is compromised, is there 
any reason to change keys periodically since I am using IKE?

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Keith Ray                                          aphex@nullify.org
                                              http://www.nullify.org
PGP - 0xAE1B3529 - 8227 60E5 BAA5 9461 CAB3 A6F2 4DFE F573 AE1B 3529


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