SuSE Twofish encryption - Strength ?

[DistressedDes]

Hi,

I'm a relatve newcomer to the everyday use of encryption and I was wondering if there are any suse encryption gurus out there.

I'm mounting a couple of partitions through a loop device with twofish encryption and an alphanumeric password of about 26 characters.

Can anyone tell me, does the bit-level of the encryption relate directly to the length of the password, or does SuSE's default twofish module have a fixed bit strength?

I'd also be interested to hear opinions on how strong such encryption would be.

SuSE 10.1

Thanks

 

[Annihilannic]

Not familiar with twofish, but I'm pretty certain password length has little to do with the bit-level of the encryption.

Annihilannic.

 

[DistressedDes]

Thanks Annihilannic,

What I meant to say, more precisely, is does the password length, dictate which bit level is used, i.e. 128, 192, 256.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twofish

I can't seem to put my finger on it the answer in relations to SuSEs implementation.

 

[Annihilannic]

Yes, that's how I understood your question, and no, I'm pretty sure the password length would not dictate the bit level that is used. I've no experience of Twofish itself, but in the others that I have used the bit level and password length are independent.

Annihilannic.

 

[DistressedDes]

However, would it be correct to say that a longer password, irrespective of the actual bit-level would make it inherently more secure. (assuming a brute force attack) or is it simply down to the key length?

 

[Annihilannic]

It would be correct to say that.

Annihilannic.

 

[DistressedDes]

Thanks Annihilannic