How do brute force decryption attacks know when they've found the right solution?

Asked 2010-06-16T18:21:49.947

How do brute-force attacks on encrypted data know when they've found the right key to decrypt the data? Is there a way to know that data's been decrypted, other than having a human looking at it? What if it's not human-friendly data?

encryption brute-force cryptanalysis

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Cryptanalysts hope to have known ciphertext and plaintext. A key which decrypts that ciphertext to that plaintext is certainly the right key.

Without known plaintext, the data's format must be known. For example, plaintext HTML contains tags. A phone directory plaintext contains phone numbers. And so on.

answered 2010-06-16T18:24:12.143

How do brute force decryption attacks know when they've found the right solution?

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