Quote Originally Posted by User137 View Post
256-bit encryption is still nowadays secure. In computer theory it's quantum computers that some decades later may revolutionize decryption, but modern supercomputers can't do it.

If interested you can try something like:
http://www.golubev.com/hashgpu.htm
It even uses GPU power to greatly utilize all the power computer has for MD5 hash cracking. If you assume that word is only 1..8 characters long (256-bit would mean 32 characters) and only contain small letters from a..z it will take many hours. Now add numbers and big letters in the force and it'll take forever...
I agree that breaking 256-bit enkcyption on a single computer would be usles becouse it would take to much time. But what if you do this with thousands of computers, each trying out just a portion of posibilities? Then the time greatly decreases. And what is cloud computing that just dividing some work between a few thousands computers.

Why do you think that larger hacker groups are creating their own so caled botnets? Becouse this can provide them with a great computational power. And with large enough botnet you could achive computational power even compared to some supercomputers.

Also rapid advancments in computer technology are making data encryption less and less secure every day. Are you aware that most mobile phones nowadays have more computational power than 15 years old computers have. For instance my Nokia 5320 has 369 MHz ARM processor and it isn't considered as smartphone. Most smartphones have 1 GHz ARM procesor in them already, and some even have multicore procesors. And theese can easily cope with 10 years old computers if now even newer.