Information Security News: Re: Business spy threat is real, former CIA chief says

["Robert G. Ferrell" <root () rgfsparc cr usgs gov>]

> The new algorithm recently approved by the
> U.S. Commerce Department, for example, is so strong that
> it would take an estimated 149 trillion years to unscramble,
> he said.
It would have have taken us > 14 years to get to the moon and back, too,
if we had walked.

Is that 149 trillion years for a team of expert cryptographers using 2,000 of
the fastest CPUs currently in existence, or 149 trillion years for one
chimpanzee using an abacus and an infinite supply of bananas?

Numbers like "149 trillion years" presented in the absence of some sort of
context are worse than meaningless--they're dangerously misleading.

Or so it seems to me.

RGF

Robert G. Ferrell, CISSP
Information Systems Security Officer
National Business Center
U. S. Dept. of the Interior
Robert_G_Ferrell () nbc gov
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 Who goeth without humor goeth unarmed.
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