Block cipher

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Revision as of 10:57, 26 October 2008 by imported>Sandy Harris (→‎Adequate key size)
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Adequate key size

Any cipher can be broken by a brute force attack if its key size is inadequate. Current block ciphers all use at least 128-bit keys to protect against this; many support larger keys as well. For a block cipher, the cost of brute force increases as 2keysize-1. For discussion, see the symmetric ciphers section of the "brute force attacks" article.