Re: [gentoo-user] My last words on cryptology and cryptography.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 26 June 2008, Sebastian Wiesner wrote:
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> at Thursday 26 June 2008,
> 10:54:43
>
> > The calculation is quite simple - measure how quickly a specific
> > computer can match keys. Divide this into the size of the keyspace.
> > The average time to brute force a key is half that value. AFAIK
> > this still averages out at enormous numbers of years, even at
> > insane calculation rates like what RoadRunner can achieve.
>
> According to Wikipedia RoadRunner is designed for 1.7 petaflops in
> peak. Assuming for the sake of simplicity, that decryption can be
> performed within a single flop:
>
> (2^256) / (1.7 * 10^15) / 2 ~= 3.5 * 10^61
>
> In years:
>
> 3.5 * 10^61 / 3600 / 24 / 356 ~= 10^54
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems impossible to me, to reduce
> this get the required amount somewhere near to the life time of a
> human being ;)

Even with your ultra-liberal assumptions, it still comes out to:

1000000000000000000000000000000000000

times longer than the entire universe is believed to have existed thus 
far (14 billion years). That is an unbelievable stupendously long 
period of time. Yeah, I'd agree that brute force is utterly unfeasible 
as a vector of attack. Not even the almighty NSA could ever pull that 
one off as there simply aren't enough atoms in the universe to make a 
supercomputer big enough.

Numbers don't lie.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

-- 
gentoo-user@l.g.o mailing list