[31] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Ron Rivest: DES key search // concrete analogy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Tue Jan 7 13:26:58 1997
To: cryptography@c2.net
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 11:45:50 -0500
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Forwarded with permission.
------- Forwarded Message
From: rivest@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Ron Rivest)
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 97 23:07:16 EST
Message-Id: <199701070407.AA22621@swan.lcs.mit.edu>
To: coderpunks@toad.com
Subject: DES key search // concrete analogy
For your amusement:
The number 2^56 of DES keys is quite close to the number of 3"x5" index
cards that it takes to cover the surface of the earth (ocean included).
A Pentium searching 200,000 keys/second is like driving a car at 70 mph
and checking all the index cards in a 200-foot wide swath. At this speed,
it takes two weeks just to go around the earth once.
Cheers,
Ron Rivest
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