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by oconnore 617 days ago
256 bit symmetric cryptography keys are a bit like picking one atom in the universe (10^80 atoms, or 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000). Your opponent would have to test half of the atoms in the universe to have a reasonable chance of getting the right key.

That's generally understood to be not feasible.

2 comments

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_...

It's more than that. Simply incrementing your way through a 256 bit counter is impossible by the thermodynamic cost alone.

Correct. Better to get into other forms of cryptography than pointlessly increase the numbers. We need to think more about PQ proofing.
AES-256 is already post-quantum secure; what exactly are you suggesting?
He could get lucky though. :-P