[139616] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: AES HDD encryption was XOR
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Victor Duchovni)
Tue Dec 9 12:52:37 2008
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 11:27:22 -0500
From: Victor Duchovni <Victor.Duchovni@morganstanley.com>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Mail-Followup-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <10A5217D-C6D5-4474-A932-B0044D5097A3@callas.org>
On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 08:53:18PM -0800, Jon Callas wrote:
> >In the NBC TV episode of /Chuck/ a couple of weeks ago, the NSA
> >cracked
> >"a 512-bit AES cipher" on a flash drive "trying every possible key".
> >"Could be hours, could be days." (Only minutes in TV land.)
> >
> >http://www.nbc.com/Chuck/video/episodes/#vid=838461
> >(Chuck Versus The Fat Lady, 4th segment, at 26:19)
> >
> >It's no wonder that folks are deluded, pop culture reinforces this.
>
> No, this is simple to do.
>
> What you is to start with a basic cracking engine. And then you add
> another one an hour later, and then an hour later add two, then add
> four the next hour and so on.
>
> If you assume that the first cracker can do 2^40 keys per second, then
> you're guaranteed to complete in 472 hours, which is only 20 days. And
> of course there's always the chance you'd do it in the first hour.
>
> For those who doubt being able to double the cracking power, Moore's
> law proves this is possible.
In the well-known Indian fable, the King was bankrupted by doubling grains
of rice on a 64-square chess-board. Back in the USSR, every school-child
learned this fable. Oh, and chess was pretty popular too...
The fact that the fable refutes the *sustainability* of Moore's "law"
seems to be under-appreciated on this side of the Iron-curtain. It is
not a question of whether, but rather when the departure from Moore's
"law" will take place.
The computing power of the microprocessor is still under 32 powers of
2 from its inception, naive extrapolation to the next 32 powers of 2
is unwise.
--
Viktor.
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