Translations:Concepts/OpenPGP Getting Started/11/en

Nobody cracks keys by brute force attacks. That is (even for rather short keys, say 1024 bit) simply impossible for everyone beneath the level of a government agency of a "rich" country within the next decades. And it would not make sense: It's so easy to just steal them. With a huge probability the system which you are just using to read this text (if not printed...) is not very secure. De facto no system which is used for reading email or reading web pages is safe. Don't argue, just accept this. If you don't you probably just compromise yourself. A key is never more secure than the least secure system on which it has been used (this, of course, includes: created). And it is more secure than the least secure system on which it has been stored just by its passphrase which is no protection against a brute force attack if it is either not really random or less than about 16 characters long (for small and capital letters and digits).