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From: Peter Fairbrother <peter@tsto.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: What are the chances of this encrytion being broken?
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 04:13:53 +0000
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On 24/03/2025 21:33, hal@invalid.com wrote:

> And - I am not speaking of crypto for mass use. Only for personal use,
> wherein one *can* make it useful and secure.

No. You can't. Even if you are an expert.

You might have a whole bunch of experts trying to break it, at which 
point you lose.

It's known as Schneier's law.

NSA employ more experts than anyone else (except maybe Russia or China). 
They are the biggest employer of mathematicians in the US. And they have 
very big computers.


Peter Fairbrother.


Schneier's Law:

"Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can 
create an algorithm that he himself can't break. It's not even hard.

What is hard is creating an algorithm that no one else can break, even 
after years of analysis.

And the only way to prove that is to subject the algorithm to years of 
analysis by the best cryptographers around."

Unfortunately Schneier was a little wrong: years of cryptanalysis by 
people who keep their results from you don't help you any, and even 
years of public cryptanalysis don't actually "prove" anything.