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"Broken" generally isn't a binary event in cryptography. It's a continuum from "impossible to do with all the time and energy of the universe and the most adva
by anonisko 6y ago
"Broken" generally isn't a binary event in cryptography.
It's a continuum from "impossible to do with all the time and energy of the universe and the most advanced computers we have" to "my commodity hardware can crack it in a few minutes".
The same goes for fears of quantum computing breaking current cryptography. It goes from effectively impossible to "yeah, we could break it with a few years of constant computation, which is plenty of time to switch to quantum resistant schemes".
- bawolff 6y agoWell that's generally true, sometimes breakthroughs do happen overnight. Its not impossible.
- anonisko 6y agoYup. That's why I say generally. Even if the paper is correct it seems to fall into the 'moving down the continuum' category.
- jMyles 6y ago> "Broken" generally isn't a binary event in cryptography. If there were, for example, a way to glean a private key without factoring the modulus, I think we'd all agree that this amounts to "breaking" the system insofar as that it changes the applicability of the hardness assumption. On the other hand, simply achieving a faster way to factor the modulus is, at best, part of a continuum as you say.
- mekster 6y ago> which is plenty of time to switch to quantum resistant schemes That's not how you treat broken cryptography. If your data is already collected and stored encrypted by a third party which still holds value after several years, you're already in bad shape.