How to Protect Data With Encrytption
Brute Force Break: Performs a trial decryption on the encryption for every possible key. This technique is slow and takes extreme amounts of time. In addition, the bit of the key directly effects the time required to crack.
Cryptographic Break: Is anything faster than brute force, and usually works from understanding how the encryption is encoded, then working backwards from the key but requires advanced math and software coding skills.
- Encryptions Algorithms
How the encryptions works changes dramatically depending on the algorithms of the encryption. It is important to note the variety of encryption algorithms. They have been developed individually for a reason and each algorithm of encryptions has its own time and place. It is also important to understand that by encryption algorithm, I am not referring to the bit of key.AES (128,192,256 bit), Advanced Encryption Standard: An encryption algorithm developed to be fast and secure. There are no publicly known high potency cryptographic cracks so any attack would take an inconceivable amount of time, even an encryption at the lowest bit on today’s average pc.
RSA’s Algorithm (Infinitely large bit): The Algorithm used to encrypt data on websites using SSL. RSA algorithm requires high CPU usage to generate keys because generating random number is hard for a computer. The higher the encryption the more powerful machine is required and therefore more money is required. Modern SSL uses low bit encryption keys (128) and changes them often to save on CPU usage. Many cryptographic theories that threaten the security of the RSA’s Algorithm are too hard to perform on higher bit encryption larger than 32 bit on modern computers.
Extensions (e.g. Serpent and Twofish): Are simple algorithms that encrypt the key once more for an extra layer of security most commonly on AES. Whether or not this indeed increases the security is really a matter of opinion because, there are still the same amount of possible keys and the extensions algorithms are easily cryptographically broke.
