Brief presentation about key and cipher use

1. Information about key and ciphers
● Encryption is only as strong as the key used to
run the cipher in most cases.
● A strong key is essential to have effective
encryption.
● Many of the most used ciphers are freely
available to all, therefore the key is very
important.

2. ● Key length is normally referred to in bits
– The longer the key length, typically the more
secure the key
– A short key (ex. 8 bit) could be easily
guessed by a normal computer
– A long key (ex. 256 bit) would be very difficult
and time consuming for a computer to
guess.
– The computer would have to generate every
single number that the key could be, which
if it is a long key, could be billions (or more!)
of numbers.
– It would then have to apply every one of
those numbers to the cipher until the key
was found

3. ● The combination of a long length key, and a
complex cipher can make encryption
effectively unbreakable
– It's commonly accepted that no encryption is
“unbreakable”, but the intent of the
encryption is to make it so difficult and
expensive to break the encryption that no
one would attempt it.
– For example, the National Security Agency
maintains that 128bit encryption ran
through the AES cipher is acceptable for
use for all civilian activities
● 128bit AES encryption is acceptable for the
Government to encrypt up to Secret
information

4. ● 192bit AES encryption is considered good
enough to encrypt up to Top Secret
information
● 256bit encryption is considered to be so good
that so far no one has been able to break it
(or admitted to breaking it).

5. ● Encryption standards and products are
typically mandated and controlled by the
government.
– Generally ciphers are governed by the
government as a class of weapon
– Exporting a cipher to another country can end
with you arrested for weapons trafficking
and terrorism charges
– The man that developed and released free-
of-charge the encryption standard that you
probably use in your email account was
charged with weapon based offenses for
doing so.

6. Summary
● Encryption will only be as good as the cipher
and length of key that you use.
● Control of ciphers is tightly managed by the
US Government (particularly the NSA)
● Proper use of ciphers and good keys can
make your computer magnitudes more
secure.

7. Summary
● Encryption will only be as good as the cipher
and length of key that you use.
● Control of ciphers is tightly managed by the
US Government (particularly the NSA)
● Proper use of ciphers and good keys can
make your computer magnitudes more
secure.