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its a sane decision. just make sure you implement properly. like everything crypto, it will be broken, eventually. but its a safer choice than a new algoritm.

it reminds me of the vulnerability issues. when apps have no known vulnerabilities, all is fine. when a new "instant root compromise of any system" comes out, its omgomgomg. Then its fixed, and all is fine again.

Except that vulnerability was always there. And other ones that are yet to be public are there too. And many of them are "omgomgomg" material.

Well crypto is the same. We don't have public data on which algorithm are broken. We just know they will be eventually, by logic or by brute force.

So, take the wise decisions, and don't forget you might eventually need to update it.



This is a naive attitude. Mathematically-secure cryptography with an implementation that avoids all side-channel attacks is unbreakable, as in, would take more time than the projected heat death of the universe to brute force.

That's not to say that all implementations are secure, or that there are not undiscovered mathematical flaws in common algorithms, but the idea that all encryption is brute-forcable given enough AWS instances is just plain incorrect.


> Mathematically-secure cryptography ... is unbreakable

To expand on sibling comments: Cryptography essentially depends on the assumption that P=NP (well, not exactly, but...). It's possible, though unlikely, that mathematical discoveries could undermine all possible conventional cryptographic schemes.

As for brute-force, that's a tricky one as well. If you allow a strengthening of Moore's law that says that operations per second per dollar increase exponentially, then you can construct the following "polynomial time" algorithm for any cryptographic problem:

    Wait n*k years, where
      - n is the problem size in bits, and
      - k is a scaling factor to get the exponents to align
    Buy a computer
    Run the brute force algorithm on your new computer


How do you know that mathematically-secure cryptography can actually exist?


This is not related to password hashing algorithms being discussed here, but:

mathematically-secure cryptography was invented in 1882/1917: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

Fun further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

Also, fun reading: The Code Book by Simon Singh, and Spycatcher by Peter Wright


I don't think I follow your definition of 'Mathematically-secure' is this even an attainable definition? To expect all crypto to be eventually broken is an attitude with foresight.




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