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Comment by myself248 | Hacker News Reader

I thought anything above the processing power of a Playstation2 was export-controlled by default. Why these specifically?

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The regulations are revised on a regular basis so twenty years later maybe it's more like anything above a 3090 Ti. Also I suspect that "so powerful it's almost illegal" marketing back in the day was just marketing.

It's possible that the US got wind of some military/dual-use supercomputers based on A100/H100 and decided to block them but that's just speculation.

> The regulations are revised on a regular basis

As far as I can tell, at least for components, it's never gotten less restrictive. Any processor considered fast in the late 1980s is still under EAR despite being inadequate for a modern toaster.

It's truly ridiculous trying to manage the US Government's bureaucratic bullshit sometimes. I mean, really, a toaster.

How long would it take one A100 to crack RSA 2048?

Even if you had your GPU-packed Kilo-Google per person multiplanetary Gigagalactic computer guessing numbers for 37 times the age of the universe, it would still have a 1 in 32 billion chance of cracking. https://youtu.be/S9JGmA5_unY?t=32

Your video is talking about 256-bit symmetric encryption. RSA is asymmetric encryption. RSA 2048 is ~112 bits of protection when comparing to symmetric keys, kinda. We're still talking a long time with current computing hardware though.

> For example, if SHA-256 is used with RSA and a 2048-bit key, the combination can provide no more than 112 bits of security because a 2048-bit RSA key cannot provide more than 112 bits of security strength - NIST SP 800-57 PART 1, Page 58

Warning, PDF: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.S...

Still forever.

With enough of them, only half the lifetime of the universe!

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