Not correct, unless "a little longer" means "trillions of times longer than the age of the universe".
LOL - well, that's just slightly longer than what we Texans mean when we say we're "fixin' to" do something, heheh.
You may be right about the math (I'm no mathematician). I was under the impression that the NSA has access to the fastest supercomputers which could crack 256 bit encryption, given a few months to do so.
Here's a link to an interesting commentary on the subject:
This sentence is from that article:
"A Swedish team managed to crack 256 bit encryption in around two weeks..."
Maybe that's all just hype - I don't know. But the following links show info that in 1997, a non-government computer was built to crack DES (56 bit) and proved that it could be done when almost everyone was saying that it couldn't.
The best defenses (war or computer) will always eventually be overcome by new improved offenses, and the best offenses, likewise, will always be defeated by new and improved defenses - (IMHO) - at least, this has historically been true.
Thus, I agree with the end of your post where you said:
"... although it's entirely possible the NSA knows things that we don't."
LOL
FReegards,
RT
Unfortunately there's not much detail beyond that, so I don't know exactly what it means. It certainly wasn't a brute-force attack.
But the following links show info that in 1997, a non-government computer was built to crack DES (56 bit) and proved that it could be done when almost everyone was saying that it couldn't.
Sure, but 56 bits isn't that much. 2^56 = 72 quadrillion keys. Sounds like a lot, but it's easily within reach of today's computers, either by clustering a lot of them together or by building special-purpose hardware like the EFF did. But every bit you add *doubles* the number of possible keys, so a 64-bit key is 256 times harder to break than a 56-bit key (again, assuming brute force is the only possible way). Once you get up to 128 bits, it's effectively impossible, see the above post for more detailed math.
The best defenses (war or computer) will always eventually be overcome by new improved offenses, and the best offenses, likewise, will always be defeated by new and improved defenses - (IMHO) - at least, this has historically been true.
In cryptography, the defense has a huge advantage. If you have the key, it's almost as easy to decrypt a message that used a 128-bit key as a 64-bit key, but as I've mentioned, it's tremendously more difficult to extract that key if you don't have it. Which just means that snoops will have to resort to other tactics. The best encryption in the world won't help if the CIA is looking at your computer screen via a hidden camera.