Google is planning to upgrade its SSL certification system by doubling the encryption key lengths to 2048-bits by late 2013, as part of its efforts to make the system even stronger.
The upgrade, which is based on the rules from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will also see Google’s root certificate for signing all of its SSL certificates receiving an upgrade from a 1024-bit key.
Google Information Security Engineering director Stephen McHenry said that the company will begin switching to the new 2048-bit certificates on 01 August to ensure adequate time for a careful rollout before the end of the year.
"We’re also going to change the root certificate that signs all of our SSL certificates because it has a 1024-bit key," McHenry said.
According to Google, the upgrade is required as to protect possible technical break down of the standard.
The first reported factorisation of a 768-bit RSA modulus approached in December 2009 and an international team of computer scientists and cryptographers worked collaboratively for two-and-a-half years over the task.
According to NIST, it would take about six or seven years for any effort to have a realistic possibility of success at breaking 1,024-bit keys, as per the processor development speed and enhancements in factoring computation.
