Hi,

I am wondering, what is the most secure and "hack-proof", if you can put it like this, encryption logarithm out there.

Of curse, you can always say the higher the "bits", the stronger the encryption (against brute forcing, probably only), but i believe that even if you have a huge pin for your safe, and the safe either has a backdoor or is made out of a weak material, it does you no good.

Do logarithms differ for file encryption and ssl? What are the differences, if any? Are there any other basic principles i might be missing here? Do different logarithms usually only have one function, or can one logarithm do everything, from encrypting files to signing emails and encrypting ssl content...

Thanks!!

log base 10 for sure

I am wondering, what is the most secure and "hack-proof", if you can put it like this, encryption logarithm out there.
Unless you're using one-time pads, then theoretically no. Most modern encryption schemes will be rendered obsolete as computation power increases. Obviously key size will scale as well to match.

Of curse, you can always say the higher the "bits", the stronger the encryption (against brute forcing, probably only), but i believe that even if you have a huge pin for your safe, and the safe either has a backdoor or is made out of a weak material, it does you no good.
A backdoor would certainly be bad, but to be honest I worry more about weaknesses being discovered in the algorithm itself that simplify the computational complexity, like the SHA and MD5 weaknesses that were recently discovered.

Do logarithms differ for file encryption and ssl? What are the differences, if any?
Algorithms certainly, logarithms not so much . Keysize and algorithm efficiency are much more important issues for encrypting network traffic. For example you can find file encryption algorithms with absolutely massive key sizes. For network based protocols as you increase key size you'll eventually start to create a bottleneck that will slow traffic. Similarly you'd want more computationally efficient algorithms for network-based encryption as well.

Beware quick answers.

Anyway, the algorithms thought to be the most secure are Blowfish, IDEA, RC5, RC4 (if used right), Serpent.

By most secure it means that the best way to break them would be brute force. It's believed that quantum-computing will make most irrelevant, so the security of the data must be related to the time it must be kept secure. There are many factors in this. It's best for you to research it. Here are some pointers:

http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...raphic_attacks
http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/igui...to-hashes.html
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hopwoo...can/index.html