Encryption and risk

[richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Richard Pieri)]

On Oct 7, 2009, at 1:35 AM, David Kramer wrote:
> That is a blatant case of the statistician drowning in a lake with an
> average depth of three feet.  You have to understand what the numbers
> mean in real life.

No.  I did specify an exhaustive keyspace search.  That does mean  
checking every possible key.  As you say, you could get lucky and hit  
a particular key after only a few seconds of the search.  You are more  
likely to witness the heat death of the universe before finding that  
key (VNLL), which is why cryptanalytic attacks are used to attack  
contemporary encryption.  As Bruce Schneier is fond of saying, attacks  
don't get worse, they get better.

--Rich P.