Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Sure. A 128 bit key is 2^128 or 3.4e38.

Numbers about total world computing power (most of it probably stuck in GPUs doing windows animations and playing Call of Duty) bandied about are in the Ne18ish ops/sec range, age of the universe is in the 4e17 range.

And I have a great deal of margin by treating a 'decrypt and verify' operation as a 'basic operation' and using a completely preposterous time period like the age of the universe instead of say, 10,000 years. Nobody is brute-forcing 128 bit keys anytime soon, that's a pretty basic mathematical and physical given. But if you're particularly paranoid, you can just as easily use 256 bit keys - nobody is brute-forcing those until we hit the singularity and become a galaxy-encompassing brain. Even then it might give us a serious, millennia-long headache.




Thanks, that helps!




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: