gnupg rsa question // why use e of 41 ?

here is a quote from the gnupg 1.4.3 source code, section rsa.c

=====[ begin quote ]=====

/* find an public exponent.
       We use 41 as this is quite fast and more secure than the
       commonly used 17. Benchmarking the RSA verify function
       with a 1024 bit key yields (2001-11-08):
         e=17 0.54 ms
         e=41 0.75 ms
         e=257 0.95 ms
         e=65537 1.80 ms
     */

=====[ end quote ]=====

practically,
how much more secure is an e of 41 ,
than an e of 17 ?

(i.e.
what type of attack would be successful against an e of 17
but foiled by using an e of 41 ?)

TIA,

vedaal
Received on Mon May 1 02:05:44 2006