Is AES Encryption Crackable?
A team of researchers has discovered what they think could be a flaw that leaves AES encryption open to attack. The technique has only been shown in a theoretical setting; in practice, such a hack would be very difficult to pull off. Still, such a finding could bring into question the faith that’s been placed in AES — and spur new innovation to make encryption even better.
In the field of computer technology, some topics are so frequently and fiercely disputed that they almost resemble religious feuds — Mac vs. PC, for instance, or open source vs. proprietary software.
Other topics, though, don’t see nearly the same level of high-profile debate. Take the invulnerability of AES (the Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption, for example. Governments and businesses place a great deal of faith in the belief that AES is so secure that its security key can never be broken. However, a team of researchers from Germany, France and Israel has recently demonstrated what may be an inherent flaw in AES — theoretically, at least.
So how secure is AES really? Is AES now vulnerable to a new attack, as the researchers claim?
Maybe yes, and maybe no. The research is mainly theoretical. Still, as technology evolves, successful attacks against AES may turn up, and they may be difficult to ignore.
“Can somebody repurpose and weaken the strength of the AES algorithm? Yes. That’s what cryptographers do. But we don’t have to worry about AES being weakened anytime soon. Still, AES in theory has flaws. The bottom line is that AES isn’t broken,” Ozzie Diaz, president and CEO of wireless security firm AirPatrol, told TeckNewsWorld.