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I need to store encrypted information in a mysql table. I would like to use the AES algoritm but I don't know if 4096 is supported and if it is a good length to encrypt data like: credit card, email etc.

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That depends on if you use it correctly. – Brad Nov 22 '11 at 20:17
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4096 bit AES? Are you sure you're not talking about RSA? AES 256 is probably the "comparable" key size for AES and as an algorithm my understanding is that it's very secure. – Ben Brocka Nov 22 '11 at 20:20
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I've heard 1,048,576 bit is pretty good. – Blender Nov 22 '11 at 20:20
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The fact that you are asking this question tells me you should definitely not be in the business of storing credit card information. If you are going to store credit card information you'll need PCI compliance and that's not exactly trivial. – Null Nov 22 '11 at 20:21
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 23 '11 at 13:38

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No, 4096 bit encryption is not good enough to encrypt your data. Becase of a few reasons.

  1. AES does not support 4096 bit encryption.
  2. Even if AES supported 4096 bit encryption, it would be far to slow (most likely). When 128 bit AES is plenty secure why would you want to slow your system down for such little added value?
  3. If you actually meant RSA instead of AES, still the answer is no as 4096 bit RSA is unnecessary. 2048 bit RSA is more than sufficient. But, that said, why would you want to use public-key crypto to encrypt your database? Normally that would be a bad idea. Please post more details so we can determine the best recommendation.
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not to mention, RSA will be really slow, as in I'll have to wait a year for it to encrypt. (for a whole database) – ewanm89 Nov 24 '11 at 1:27

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