CAPEC Definitions
CAPEC Definitions / CAPEC-20
CAPEC-20: Encryption Brute Forcing
An attacker, armed with the cipher text and the encryption algorithm used, performs an exhaustive (brute force) search on the key space to determine the key that decrypts the cipher text to obtain the plaintext.
Severity:Low
Possibility:Low
Extended Description
No Extended Description.
Mitigations
Use commonly accepted algorithms and recommended key sizes. The key size used will depend on how important it is to keep the data confidential and for how long.
In theory a brute force attack performing an exhaustive key space search will always succeed, so the goal is to have computational security. Moore's law needs to be taken into account that suggests that computing resources double every eighteen months.
Relationships with other CAPECs
Prerequisites
Ciphertext is known.
Encryption algorithm and key size are known.
