[cpayne5]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

NSA has the capability to decipher a 256 bit key in minutes. Otherwise this encryption technology wouldn't be available to the public.

While many of our politicians are not the "sharpest tacks in the box", the folks doing the work at NSA are pretty smart and they have almost limitless funding.

marxbitware.com - Cipher Strengths - Are They To Weak?

Computerworld > Researcher finds RSA 1024-bit encryption not enough

I do not believe that the NSA can break RSA reliably. They may get lucky here and there, but I would have a hard time believing that they can crack a totally random key in a matter of minutes.

Even if they could crack RSA, they would have to catch the key negotiation when the AES keys are passed, in order to listen in on the good stuff. No way do I believe they can crack an AES stream on its own, though.

The openness of the these cryptographic standards is what makes them safe. The world is filled with brilliant mathematicians; they don't all work at the NSA. If there was a flaw besides brute force, I'm confident that the world would know about it.