AES crypto broken by 'groundbreaking' attack

Cryptographers have discovered a way to break the Advanced Encryption Standard used to protect everything from top-secret government documents to online banking transactions.


Biclique Analysis allows 2 bits to be knocked off the key, speeding up brute force attacks by up to 5 times.


It still takes a little longer than you'll be around (trillions of years) to crack a 256 key this way. But they're well on the way.