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I've a question that has been bothering me regarding combinatorial searches, such as brute force of a key for an encryption.

Lets say I have 2^32 keys in a key space that would need to all be calculated to get a 1:1 probability of guessing the correct key. Would on average 2^32/2+1 random key searches be required to find the correct key?

My memory is leaving me about the above and what is required.

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    @Didier, this makes a lot of sense. Thank you.2011-08-20

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The mean rank of a given element of an ordered set of n to which one applied a uniformly distributed permutation is (n+1)/2. In your case you need to examine 2^(31)+.5 keys on average.