![]() ![]() In addition, RSA is used to encrypt and decrypt a ciphers keys, and SHA-1 or SHA-2 are used as hash functions to authenticate the data. It is weaknesses in these algorithms, rather than in the key length, that often leads to encryption breaking.īy far the most common ciphers that you'll encounter are those used by OpenVPN: Blowfish and AES. Ciphers are the mathematics used to perform the encryption. CiphersĮncryption key length refers to the amount of raw numbers involved. However, it also uses the AES cipher, which isn't without its own issues. It should be noted that the US government uses 256-bit encryption to protect 'sensitive' data, and 128-bit encryption for 'routine' needs. Plus, it's not in the interests of these organizations to democratize encryption. Access to quantum computers will, however, initially be the sole preserve of the most powerful and wealthy governments and corporations. In theory, the development of quantum encryption will counter this problem. Quantum computers will be exponentially more powerful than any existing computer and will make all current encryption ciphers and suites redundant overnight. Encryption will have to be developed from scratch. If and when quantum computing becomes widely available, all bets will be off. Consequently, system administrators the world over are scrambling to upgrade cipher key lengths. The sheer quantity of resources that the NSA seems willing to throw at cracking encryption has also shaken experts' faith in these predictions. This is due to hardware designers brushing up against the hard limits set by the laws of physics: transistors can only be built so small, for example, and can only be placed so close together. However, we're currently advancing at a slower pace than Moore's Law would predict. Moore's Law states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers, will double every two years.Īnd this still holds true in theory. People even thought this would be the case for another 100 years (taking Moore's Law into account). Until the Edward Snowden revelations, we assumed that 128-bit encryption was, in practice, uncrackable through brute force. The number of years required to brute force a 256-bit cipher is 3.31 x 10(56) – which is about 20000.0000 (total 46 zeros) times the age of the universe (13.5 billion or 1.35 x 10(10) years)! Almost 3 times as fast as the Fujitsu K, at 33.86 petaflops, it would "only" take it around a third of a billion years to crack just one 128-bit AES key! 256-bit keyĪ 256-bit key would require 2(128) times more computational power to break than a 128-bit one. In 2016, the most powerful supercomputer in the world was the NUDT Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou, China. ![]() Going through each of them would take thousands of operations (or more) to break. 128-bit keyĪ 128-bit key cipher has 3.4 x10(38) possible keys. Let's examine what would happen if the NSA attempted a brute force attack against various ciphers. These attacks are just as crude, with the attacker attempting every possible combination to find the correct one.īreaking modern encryption ciphers is a huge undertaking – of course, if anyone is capable of doing so, it's probably the NSA. Ciphers can be targeted by brute force attacks (or exhaustive key searches). Key length is the crudest way of determining how long a cipher will take to break – it's the raw number of ones and zeros used in a cipher. The revelations regarding the scale of the NSA's deliberate assault on global encryption standards have dented their reputation. As a result, if encrypted data becomes our new standard, it'll be singled out less by agencies that don't wish to waste their time. Encryption can make life difficult for surveillance organizations that are tasked to decrypt it, and though encrypted information will be kept indefinitely until it's cracked, cracking it is an incredibly lengthy process. Using encryption to protect your data is a good start. To this day, most of them continue to pursue legislation that allow for backdoors to monitor your calls, messages, and general internet activity.įortunately, there are steps we can take in order to avoid the eye-in-the-sky that bears increasing similarity to George Orwell's Big Brother. Governments across the world employ everything from ISP logging to phone malware if it allows them to spy on their citizens. Sadly, these invasive practices arent exclusive to the US. ![]()
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