Replies

So, checking for success is not necessary and counting breakin attempts would not help. Just calculate the key and use it.

And what do you calculate the key from? That works fine if you have the lockbox and full access, but that doesn't help when you're submitting login attempts remotely. Likewise, if you're intercepting encrypted passwords and/or hashes, sure you can break those but there's probably several different results for any given hash (many of which make sense when a password can just be a string or random chars), so how do you know which one is correct?

And what do you calculate the key from?

What I'm referring to here are Public (aka Asymmetric) Key systems. Keys are generated in pairs, a private key which is kept hidden and a public key which is distributed and generally known. Currently it is not computationally feasible to calculate the private key from the known public key. Quantum computing is supposed to make that possible.

If QC breaks the PK systems, then you won't be able to securely connect to your bank or other sensitive site as some other computer could authenticate itself as your bank's computer system, or could stand between you and your bank and you would not even notice.

All this is still quite a ways off. The secure web protocols will be updated before it becomes a problem.