Brute-force attack

A brute-force attack is an attack in which every possible key is tried in turn in an attempt to discover the key with which the document has been encrypted.

The CPU time required increases very drastically as the key length is increased.

CrypTool offers a brute-force attack to be carried out. The key range to be searched through is entered in the Key range dialog.

Brute-force attack against modern symmetric encryption algorithms

To perform an attack successfully in an appropriate time, some conditions must be fulfilled:

The key will always be found if the document fullfills the above requirements.