3 ms·
> iterating through every possible value of a 256 bit key It's my understanding that when encryption gets "broken", it usually refers to something other than a
by Unklejoe 5y ago
> iterating through every possible value of a 256 bit key
It's my understanding that when encryption gets "broken", it usually refers to something other than a simple brute force attack. Like, something that would make it so you don't need to run as many iterations or whatever.
I assume this because a brute force attack is something that is always possible from day 1, whereas an encryption scheme being broken is something that happens some time afterwards.
- curryst 5y agoMy understanding is that encryption is "broken" any time it becomes feasible for someone to decrypt your data without the key. Brute force attacks are always hypothetically possible, but the encryption isn't broken unless such an attack is feasible. As a counter-example, DES would count as "unbroken" under your definition. The EFF built a machine in 1998 for under $250,000 that could crack a DES key in under 24 hours. I don't know what that would cost today, but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple GPUs could get you the same thing today. The difference is whether such an attack has even a vanishing chance of succeeding. For AES, the hardware just isn't anywhere close to that. Afaik, there isn't anything that could even hypothetically threaten to make brute force attacks on AES feasible on the table today.
- SahAssar 5y agoI think you're mixing "weak" and "broken". Out of interest I looked at the Known attacks section of wikipedias AES article and it says as the first sentence "For cryptographers, a cryptographic "break" is anything faster than a brute-force attack". DES is both weak and broken, but it could be either without the other.