3 ms·

because many programming languages dont support anything beyond 64 bit integers.

• Jtsummers 3y ago
  Maximum integer size on a CPU or in a language has nothing to do with key sizes for serious (non-toy) cryptographic systems. Use multiple integers, likely in an array, if needed, as has been done for a very long time.
  • tialaramex 3y ago
    Yes, it's not usual for the rest of the software to think about these as integers at all, they're just a bunch of bits, like a JPEG so yes, the 128-bit key would be e.g. Rust's [u8; 16] exactly 16 contiguous bytes. The encryption algorithms themselves, if they're even written in a high level language rather than supplied as machine code, perhaps using hardware acceleration, may treat this some other way, but that's completely irrelevant to you in the rest of the code. Maybe it sees this as [u16; 8] or as [[u32; 2]; 2] for some reason, you don't care.