Thanks for that (and the previous).... It makes the brain hurt but raises a few questions in my mind.
The real purpose of a Fermi estimate isn't to give you solid answers: it's to give you an appreciation of the problem. If it does that, it's done its job. (Also, a listmember named Ineiev points out that I *may* be misapplying the Margolus-Levitin theorem. It's ... interesting. I need to think on it for a while. The objection is basically, "that much energy has to be present, but not necessarily released as heat: Landauer still applies. You need something really energetic, but that energy might not be world-ending." I don't know: I need to think about that. :) )
Does anything prevent the key breaker getting lucky and cracking it first try?
Nope. The odds are considerably worse than the lottery, though.
It seems to me that all discussions on key breaking with their very large numbers always assume that the last try is THE ONE.
The assumption is the key is broken after exhausting 50% of the keyspace.
And how does the cracker know he has succeeded ?
We're assuming the cracker has a crib -- a known message header or something similar. This is usually a safe assumption to make.
Does he have to pause between each iteration to see if he has 'something good' ?
Checking takes time, yes.
And in the 10**38 key attempts, what's the chance of having multiple apparently 'GOOD ONES' ?
Infinitesimal. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
