Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail

Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail
Donald	Oct 11 2005, 06:51 PM
Elite member Posts: 454 Group: Trusted Member Member #8 Joined: September 2, 2005	Insecure beat me to the punch by just a few minutes again. But heck, I'm going to post my numbers anyway. Check me on this, I'm bad at math guys. 128 bits in decimal = 3.410^38, or, to write it out: 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 BIG just can't quite describe this number. And, personally, I use 256 bit encryption for many things. Talk about overkill. 256 bits in decimal is 1.2E+0077, or, to write it out: 120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 The total number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be between 410^78 and 110^79. So 256 bits is only 1 or 2 orders of magnitude off of that. According to wikipidia, the fastest computer as of March 25, 2005 does 13510^12 floating operations per second. So lets assume comparing a key took ONE floating operation. (It takes a LOT more than that), todays fastest super computer would still require 2.510^24 seconds to explore 128 bit key space. Thats 2,518,518,518,518,518,660,000,000 seconds, or approximatly 7.910^16 years. To write it out: 79,220,219,535,072,368 years. So, IF you had a building with 79,220,219,535,072,368 copies of the worlds fastest computer, AND if it only took 1 floating point operation to test a key (NOT!), you could brute force a 128 bit key in one year. But my 256 bit encryption would still take 1.510^60 years to completely explore the key space. Remember, thats with 7.910^16th copies of the worlds fastest computer. 1.5*10^60 years. Keyspace is BIG. really big. Donald


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