Losing the Code War by Stephen Budiansky

[Jon Simon]

At 11:00 AM -0500 2/4/02, Trei, Peter wrote:
>Don't forget that the MITM attack (which Schneier claims
>takes 2^(2n) = 2^112 time), also requires 2^56 blocks
>of storage. That's a lot, and the attack ceases to be
>parallelizable, unlike the straight brute-force attack.
>In fact, it's utterly intractable at the moment. Here's
>why:
>
>2^56 bytes = 72 petabytes, and
>I suspect you'd need 8 bytes per entry, or
>about 1/2 an exabyte.

With 120GB drives starting at about $200, the storage requirements 
can be met today, albeit not cheaply.  In four years or so, when we 
have 1TB drives, it will just be that much easier.  But I'm not 
losing any sleep either.
-Jon Simon
-- 

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