Hello, My understanding of en-/decryption is that there is no indication of progress toward finding a successful key match of a given encryption. Only when the key is exactly correct will the encrypted data be revealed. I have seen numerous TV and movie stories where someone is frantically attempting to decrypt something and there is a progress meter to indicate the current degree of success. Every time I see this I think "That is total BS! It is all or nothing." Related to this is the oft-repeated request to avoid identifiable information (initials, birth date, etc.) in a cryptographic key. I presume this gives an attacker a preferred set of characters to attempt before moving on to truly random combinations. Finally, a brute force attack requires potentially billions of attempts. Obviously this cannot be done by trying the usual log in screens or prompts; there are delays between attempts, and a limited number of attempts per some interval. How does an attacker then perform a brute force attack? Does he cadge a block of encrypted text and hammer on that until success?
Is this a correct interpretation? -- James Moe moe dot james at sohnen-moe dot com 520.743.3936
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
_______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
