3des vs blowfish for ssh?

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (dsr at tao.merseine.nu)]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 02:57:03PM -0500, Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> When using ssh, which encryption method is considered more secure - 3des
> or blowfish?   I've always used 3des.

What are you worried about?

Blowfish's strengths are that it is relatively fast, reasonably
well analyzed, and completely unencumbered by patents.

Twofish is a successor to Blowfish that lends itself to easier
hardware implementations.

Rijndael was selected as the AES, successor to DES. Either that
means that it's really quite good, or it might mean that the NSA
has a break for it that no one else has come up with.

3DES is slow. If implemented badly (as has historically happened
on a few occasions) the strength can be drastically reduced.

But realistically? Who is attacking you, and what resources do
they have to do it?

-dsr-