I was under the impression that simply by increasing the length of the key you can get the probability of cracking it arbitrarily low with a given amount of computing power running for a given number of computing cycles, at least barring any radical new developments in number theory/computing theory like a discovery that P=NP…is that incorrect?
Well, anyone who uses any sort of key-based encryption has to accept that if Moore’s law goes on for enough decades, eventually all their encrypted messages will be retroactively decodable with relatively cheap computers, assuming the encrypted versions were saved…but people who use encryption usually aren’t too worried about this as long as it’s expected this would take decades or centuries. And if Moore’s law does continue, the time between “it becomes feasible to retroactively decrypt a single universal key of length N” and “it becomes feasible to retroactively decrypt every person’s individual key of length N” perhaps wouldn’t be all that long.
As for corrupt officials willing to leak the key, that is a risk, but the same risk exists with nuclear codes. Even here there are precautions that could be taken, like making sure anyone accessing the key is being recorded while they do so, and has been searched for recording devices beforehand.
