What does the bits specify in encryption?

Question

You know 64 bit 128 bit 256 bit etc...

Answer 1

The process of encryption hides data or the contents of a message in such a way that the original information can be recovered through a corresponding decryption process. Encryption and decryption are common techniques in cryptography, the scientific discipline behind secure communications.

Many different encryption / decryption processes or algorithms exist. It turns out that in cryptography, it's very difficult to keep the logic of an algorithm truly secret. Especially on the Internet, it's generally much easier to use well-known public algorithms, and rely on alternative forms of protection.
What is a Key?

In computer cryptography, a key is a long sequence of bits used by encryption / decryption algorithms. For example, the following represents a hypothetical 40-bit key:

00001010 01101001 10011110 00011100 01010101

A given encryption algorithm takes the original message, and a key, and alters the original message mathematically based on the key's bits to create a new encrypted message. Likewise, a decryption algorithm takes an encrypted message and restores it to its original form using one or more keys.

Some cryptographic algorithms use a single key for both encryption and decryption. Such a key must be kept secret; otherwise, anyone who had knowledge of the key used to send a message could supply that key to the decryption algorithm to read that message.

Other algorithms use one key for encryption and a second, different key for decryption. In this case the encryption key can remain public, because without knowledge of the decryption key, messages cannot be read.

In general, keys provide the necessary protection to encrypt and decrypt network communications on the Internet.
Encryption on the Internet

Modern Web browsers use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for secure transactions like ecommerce purchases and banking. SSL works by using a public key for encryption and a different private key for decryption.

Because SSL encryption depends so heavily on keys, one normally measures the effectiveness or strength of SSL encryption in terms of key length - number of bits in the key.

The early implementations of SSL in Web browsers, first Netscape 3 and then Microsoft Internet Explorer 3, used a 40-bit SSL encryption standard. Unfortunately, 40-bit encryption proved too easy to decipher or crack in practice. To decipher an SSL communication, one simply needs to generate the correct decoding key.

In cryptography, a common deciphering technique is brute-force decryption; essentially, using a computer to exhaustively calculate and try every possible key one by one. 2-bit encryption, for example, involves four possible key values:

00, 01, 10, and 11

3-bit encryption involves eight possible values, 4-bit encryption 16 possible values, and so on. Mathematically speaking, 2n possible values exist for an n-bit key.

While 240 may seem like a very large number, it is not very difficult for modern computers to crack this many combinations in a reasonable time period. The makers of Web browser software recognized the need to increase the strength of encryption and moved to a new standard, 128-bit encryption several years ago.

Compared to 40-bit encryption, 128-bit encryption offers 88 additional bits of key length. This translates to 288 or a whopping

309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056

additional combinations required for a brute-force crack.

Based on the past history of improvements in computer performance, security experts expect that 128-bit encryption will work well on the Internet for at least the next ten years.

Answer 2

in case you do no longer comprehend the way it grew to become into encrypted then it turns right into a sport of the two "hit or pass over" or a brute stress attack. the two will take years to break the code. You no longer in basic terms might desire to get the right encryption technique, yet you besides might % the main that grew to become into used. If what you're attempting to decrypt is 32 characters long then that's a MD5 hash which isn't an encryption interior the classic sense and is probably no longer decrypted.

Answer 3

Its all in the math! The higher the encryption, the harder it is to crack! To make it simple, an 8 bit encryption key would be a series of numbers between 0 and 255. Any combination of the numbers between these 2. 16 bit encryption would be any combination of numbers between 0 and 65,534. As you can see, the encryption is exponentially harder!

Answer 4

Just think of it as light switches. How many possible combinations can you make with ## of light switches.

Now imagine someone trying to figure that out. That's what they need to do to break the encryption.

Answer 5

the size of the encryption key