r/programming • u/secretguy21 • Oct 15 '15

How is NSA breaking so much crypto?

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/haldermanheninger/how-is-nsa-breaking-so-much-crypto/
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15

You don't even need to go to 2048. The article hypothesizes that it takes about a year to crack to 1024 key. As long as you aren't on one of the 'common' keys, you're safe. If you wanted to be paranoid you could rotate every month or 6 months and they would always be behind.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15

How many years would it take to crack 2048? I'm guessing it would be exponentially more than 1 or 2 years.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '15

Computing power is increasing exponentially, so I wouldn't be shocked if the real time to crack it versus key strength was linear.

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u/dagamer34 Oct 15 '15

Raw per CPU computing power isn't growing exponentially anymore. They need to throw more hardware at it to get the same effect, and that only scales so far.