Re: encryption program question

On 2012-02-28 17:56, John Smith wrote:
> I have written an encryption program as a fun little side project and I
> think I remember hearing something years ago about the length of an
> encryption key having to be a prime number of digits long in order to be
> considered even moderatly strong, but I can't find anything about that
> requirement online. Are there any encryption experts here that know whether
> or not that is true? 

I'm no encryption expert, although I have published an open-source PHP
and JavaScript implementation of Blowfish called Pccipher [1] that Bruce
Schneier deemed good enough to list on his site [2]. (Although truth be
told perf in pccipher is an embarrassment at the moment -- my goal with
the first version was to be correct and compatible, not fast; and I
haven't had the time for v2 yet.)

Anyway, I've never heard anything about keys needing to be a prime
number of digits long and from what I understand such a requirement
wouldn't make any sense at all.

[1] https://www.progclub.org/wiki/Pccipher
[2] http://www.schneier.com/blowfish-products.html