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This is a naive attitude. Mathematically-secure cryptography with an implementation that avoids all side-channel attacks is unbreakable, as in, would take more
by cheald 15y ago
This is a naive attitude. Mathematically-secure cryptography with an implementation that avoids all side-channel attacks is unbreakable, as in, would take more time than the projected heat death of the universe to brute force.
That's not to say that all implementations are secure, or that there are not undiscovered mathematical flaws in common algorithms, but the idea that all encryption is brute-forcable given enough AWS instances is just plain incorrect.
- mikeash 15y agoHow do you know that mathematically-secure cryptography can actually exist?
- willvarfar 15y agoThis is not related to password hashing algorithms being discussed here, but: mathematically-secure cryptography was invented in 1882/1917: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad Fun further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project Also, fun reading: The Code Book by Simon Singh, and Spycatcher by Peter Wright
- dekz 15y agoI don't think I follow your definition of 'Mathematically-secure' is this even an attainable definition? To expect all crypto to be eventually broken is an attitude with foresight.
- repsilat 15y ago> Mathematically-secure cryptography ... is unbreakable To expand on sibling comments: Cryptography essentially depends on the assumption that P=NP (well, not exactly, but...). It's possible, though unlikely, that mathematical discoveries could undermine all possible conventional cryptographic schemes. As for brute-force, that's a tricky one as well. If you allow a strengthening of Moore's law that says that operations per second per dollar increase exponentially, then you can construct the following "polynomial time" algorithm for any cryptographic problem: Wait n*k years, where - n is the problem size in bits, and - k is a scaling factor to get the exponents to align Buy a computer Run the brute force algorithm on your new computer