Cost of brute force decryption

[Bruce M.]

On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Deranged Mutant wrote:

> The figures look familiar.  No references around.  I'm not sure it would 
> require a whole two weeks for 40-bits, though.  Possibly less than a 
> day? (Or was that why you asked baout the figures?)
> 
> The "$10,000 worth of supercomputer time" is fuzzy.  One thing that's
> left out is that once an organization already owns the equipment and 
> has the money to spare, it may be worthwhile to crack things of less 
> importance like personal checking info, email, etc.

    Obviously this will depend on what type of computer(s) you are using 
among other things.  That was what I'm curious about.  Is there some type 
of rough formula where you could just plug in the different variables 
(computer speed, speed of each attempt, key length, etc.) and come up 
with some type of answer.  I was also curious to find out if anyone knew 
where he had come up with these figures.

                    Bruce M. * brucem at feist.com
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        "Knowledge enormous makes a god of me." -- John Keats