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I have started learning about Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Since the key size required in ECC is relatively smaller than the key size in RSA (to provide the same encryption strength), I wonder whether the smaller key size of ECC makes it vulnerable to brute force attack. Does it?

I'm not very knowledgeable about the ways in which a key can be cracked. But, basically, fewer bits means the number of possibilities can be more quickly guessed or tried!

kelalaka
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abejoe
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1 Answers1

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Yes a brute force key-guessing attack would be faster, but:

  1. It would be ridiculously slow for either. E.g. see this for 256-bit keys.
  2. There are faster attacks on both and those attacks break larger RSA sizes than ECC sizes.

Related: Why can ECC key sizes be smaller than RSA keys for similar security?

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otus
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