4 ms·
This simply isn't true. Even if you (with likely a few orders of magnitude margin) overestimate total world computing capacity at 1e21 decryption operations per
by glurgh 13y ago
This simply isn't true. Even if you (with likely a few orders of magnitude margin) overestimate total world computing capacity at 1e21 decryption operations per second it's going to take you about age-of-the-universe seconds to brute force a single 128 bit key. No amount of money or supposed 'exponential technology growth' is going to let any government brute force these anytime soon. And those are the smallest symmetric keys in wide use.
- kimlelly 13y agoCan you back these calculations up with a known scientific source?
- aryastark 13y agohttp://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded-internet-design/4372428/How-secure-is-AES-against-brute-force-attacks- http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded-internet-design/43724... The only feasible thing against AES 128 right now would be if a flaw was discovered. This is also why it doesn't matter whether you use 128, 192, 256, or higher. If one is flawed, they all are. The reason we even have higher than 128 is simply because the government loves excessive amounts of redundancy. It lets them sleep easier at night, even if it's completely unnecessary.
- kimlelly 13y ago@aryastark - What's the nature of AES 128 & Co., meaning: Who can and cannot discover flaws? Is this like open source where the whole world can watch or is this somehow a closed thing like Windows, MacOS, etc.?
- glurgh 13y agoThese are openly available, highly reviewed algorithms - their adoption as standards, too, is done by a process of open competition. And it's probably safe to say that the amount of research and analysis being done on them in the open exceeds that done in secret by government agencies by a wide margin.
- aryastark 13y agoCorrect. The AES family of algorithms are public knowledge, not proprietary. They are open for scrutiny by mathematicians and crypto experts across the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard
- jlgaddis 13y agoAs a (related) example, consider the SHA family of hashing algorithms. Competitions are held in which anyone can submit their own algorithm as a possible contender. Like a beauty pageant, the entries are narrowed down over a few rounds until just a few are left. Eventually, one algorithm is chosen and declared the winner! The whole process is done in the open and, similar to RFCs, anyone who wishes to may provide feedback. The SHA-3 competition took roughly five years. You can read about the whole process on the NIST's web site: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/index.html I'm not a developer or math whiz so most of the underlying principles of crypto are over my head but read about the process (above) is quite interesting and gave me a much better understanding in general.
- tobiasu 13y agohttp://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9908043.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9908043.pdf
- glurgh 13y agoSure. A 128 bit key is 2^128 or 3.4e38. Numbers about total world computing power (most of it probably stuck in GPUs doing windows animations and playing Call of Duty) bandied about are in the Ne18ish ops/sec range, age of the universe is in the 4e17 range. And I have a great deal of margin by treating a 'decrypt and verify' operation as a 'basic operation' and using a completely preposterous time period like the age of the universe instead of say, 10,000 years. Nobody is brute-forcing 128 bit keys anytime soon, that's a pretty basic mathematical and physical given. But if you're particularly paranoid, you can just as easily use 256 bit keys - nobody is brute-forcing those until we hit the singularity and become a galaxy-encompassing brain. Even then it might give us a serious, millennia-long headache.
- kimlelly 13y agoThanks, that helps!
- njharman 13y agoCompute power is far from the most effective brute force method to get someone's encryption key. Other means include; rendition, waterboarding, jail, similar threats and keyloggers.
- glurgh 13y agoThe OP's contention was that government computational resources and the progress of technology itself make currently-available, robust encryption technology worthless. This is inaccurate. The fact that someone can beat a key out of you is not what is usually meant by 'brute forcing' a key, in a cryptographic context.
- derleth 13y agoIf they can beat a key out of you, they can beat you for any reason, or no reason at all.