[codetrotter]

> There is no future with any foreseen technology that would be able to brute force that, so when it comes to AES and the like using at least 256-bit keys it can be reasonably assumed that destroying the key means the data is lost (anything legacy running off 128-bit is reasonable to watch out for though, 2^64 is potentially tractable).

But we can’t know for sure that AES or any other encryption algorithm doesn’t have some as-of-yet-unknown fatal flaw that would make it breakable in some way not necessarily even having anything to do with quantum computers?

[gizzlon]

Of course not. But now you're getting philosophical :) Can you really now anything?

[codetrotter]

Ha ha yeah that is true. My point though was that it’s important to keep in mind if we decide to use throwing away the encryption key as or way of protecting the data.