"L'acrobat" wrote

"phil hunt" wrote
L'acrobat wrote:

"lifetime of the serious user" what ********, you and I have
absolutely
no
idea what sort of tech/processing power will be available 10
years from
now,

Ever heard of Moore's law?

I've got a pretty good idea. A typical PC now has a 2 GHz CPU, and
about 256 MB RAM.

Assume these double every 18 months. 10 years is about 7 doublings
so in 2003 we'll see PCs with 250 GHz CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.

Right. you are going to base national security matter on a rule of
thumb
that relates to a typical PC.

Good move.

Historically, each and every crypto shop has been sublimely convinced
that_its_cypher was unbreakable. As near as I can tell, each and every
one of them was wrong. What makes that conviction so remarkable is
that most crypto shops either were breaking or had allies who had
broken the opposition's codes.

After the Walker Ring compromised US Naval codes and KGs for years, I
read an article in USNI Proceedings by a communications specialist who
airily waved that damage away with "we've changed all the keys". There
are more ways than brute force to break COMSEC.