From: "Harvey Rook (Exchange)" <hrook@exchange.microsoft.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 01:41:22 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Speed records, and brute force state of the art.
Message-ID: <2FBF98FC7852CF11912A0000000000010D19AD2B@DINO>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>From the New York Times...

WASHINGTON-The Energy Department will take delivery on Wednesday of what the
Government says is the world's fastest computer, capable of a peak
performance of 3.88 trillion calculations, or teraflops, a second. 

Just to simplify things, let's assume that 1 flop == 1 decryption. I know
that's not true, but it's very close, and it's certainly less than one order
of magnitude off.

So, with this assumption how long does it take to break various key sizes?

56 bits -- 2^56 / 3.88E12 = 5.2 hours
64 bits -- 2^64 / 3.88E12 = 55 days
80 bits -- 2^80 / 3.88E12 = 9873 years
128 bits -- 2^128 / 3.88E12 = 2.8E18 years.

And now you know.

Harv.