Where to begin?
You’re a hypocrite. You call me arrogant and say that I insult you but you assumed first that I had to Google what AES was. And you assume that I have no knowledge on the subject. I never state that I am a subject matter expert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any knowledge of the subject. Futhermore, as you didn’t write any of those articles you quoted, you must have done research in some manner. Look at yourself before you criticize others.
Secondly, I made a simple straight forward statement. Anything created by man can be destroyed/overcome by man. Your choice to assimilate this to problems caused by man is your own error. Man did not create killer bees, Kudzu, or any of the other things in your list. Man caused an errant situation. On the other hand, AES was created by man. It does not exist without man. As man has built it, man will find a way to overcome it. The Kryptos sculpture proves my point. While it has taken a long time to crack 3 of the 4 pages, the encryption was broken for the first 3 pages. You couldn’t call the Kryptos encryption impervious (Prior to it being cracked). Which is the point I was making. My reference to what you call “MAGIC” algorithms was simply a possible means of breaking the encryption.
Yes, I’m aware that most financial instituions still use 128 bit encryption. I also have read the article about Microsoft’s ECC.
As for what you call non-manmade problems, I very carefully selected what I listed to include things that were exactly man made problems. Mankind actually BRED the Killer bees by crossing African honey bees with American honey bees in hopes of creating a better producing honey bee but found the result was far worse than either the African Bee or the American Native bee, and not limited by the temperatures they thought. Sorry, you are just wrong on that. Mankind moved animals from their natural habitats to others, thereby creating problems that did not exist because they thought they were solving a specific solution to a problem. The Starlings were imported into this country in the late 1800s by an organization that wanted to bring European flora and fauna to the US and that every European bird mentioned by Shakespeare should be imported into the United States and released. DUMB move. Starlings are displacing many native species of songbirds. Kudzu and Water Hyacinth were introduced BY MAN, into areas where they were going to be "ornamental" plants only, were promised to be easily controllable according to the "experts" who introduced them. They are both now severe problem pest plants that clog waterways and make navigation almost impossible in what used to be navigable waterways. The rabbits in Australia came about because a new colonist missed hunting wild rabbits and decided to flaunt the law and released 24 rabbits into the wild so that he could hunt wild rabbits. The rabbits, now in the billions, ravage the local farms and native ecology because they have no natural predators. That is men with technology creating a problem that is now impossible to solve.
No, PJ, obviously I did not write those Wikipedia articles, but I have studied math, technology, and crytography since I was in high school and was sending cryptograms back and forth to a classmate challenging him to decipher them. So you are the hypocrite, coming late to this, and claiming any kind of knowledge but challenging people like me who DO know what they are talking about and THEN ARGUING about it when we correct your claims, especially still clinging to your opinion that "everything" can be cracked.
I even showed you one that is uncrackable. Unless one of the two parties involved tells reveals the key pattern and the book being used, NO ONE CAN CRACK IT. It is literally impossible. But if one of the users gives up the key, that is not cracking, that's just opening the door and letting them in. Cryptographers agree that that kind of shared cypher cannot be cracked.
The fact is, PJ, the Kryptos encryption was cracked just 12-18 months after it was erected in 1990, just not publicized, by teams at the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI because the first three WERE just simple dictionary cyphers. It took a freedom of information lawsuit to extract those facts from those agencies. . . and it may actually be that the fourth cypher has been cracked but just not publicized.
The artist who created it has given out some clues intended to help, giving some letter combinations and the words they actually resolve to, including two sets, one of six resolving to "BERLIN" and a second of five to "CLOCK", which he says if they can figure out which famous clock in Berlin it refers to, would give them a clue to deciphering the rest.
The fourth cypher is not just a simple dictionary key. We know that because if the artist is being honest, the last two letters substitutions for the word "BERLIN" have exactly the same letters in the cypher, and if were just a plain substitution, that could not happen. "I" and "N" would be represented by the same character, so it has to be an evolving cypher, which changes for each character.
My point is that you assume too much and not enough. . .
But, PJ, what I really want to know is why do you denigrate the best protection against violation of your privacy merely because you think that SOMEDAY, someone might be able to decrypt it—especially when someday could be trillions of years away—when it is the safest today? It is so secure the GOVERNMENT is trying desperately to find a way around it.
Do you really want to rely on second best or hope that best intentions of police with search warrants can be trusted to exercise discretion on your physically stored data that you don't control?
Frankly, you make no sense when you do that. . . and then you attack people who try to tell you why it is safe and demonstrate why. You reek fear for some reason and grasp at straws calling that person names and throwing insults around. I have only claimed you were ignorant about this field. . . which as far as I can see is true. I have not insulted your intelligence or honesty. You've done the last with me.