Re: [OFFTOPIC] RC5 Challenge

[Steve Reid <steve@edmweb.com>]

> While spreading the news about the RC5 contest, I was asked the following
> question about the 56bit key and I wonder how to answer: 
>  What is the complication of this exhaustive search? I suppose it is
>  exponential, but to what number?

With a 56 bit key, there are 2 to the power of 56 possible keys:
 72,057,594,037,927,936

A 100MHz Penium can try roughly 81,000 RC5 keys per second, or it can
try 380,000 DES keys per second.

See also: http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/bsa-final-report.ascii


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