Brute-force attack
Attack on an encrypted text, in which decryption of the encrypted text is attempted by employing all possible keys. A brute-force attack needs all the more computing power the longer the keys being used are. With symmetrical procedures, keys with a length of 128 bits and more are nowadays regarded as secure. There have already been several cases of DES-encrypted texts being decrypted by brute-force attacks. In the case of asymmetrical procedures, the brute-force attack endeavors to compute the private key from knowledge of the public key. Safe key lengths here lie at 1024 bits and higher (this will differ depending on the procedure involved).
