As for the conspiracy theory issue. You should consider that the NSA deemed AES fit to protect National Security Systems and National Security Information. _cryptography/No one knows if AES will ever be broken apart from the people who actually broke it already so either the NSA believes AES is secure or they know it's not and that it's only a matter of time before someone else figures it out.Bruce Schneier has a short post on this _the_nsa_bre.html with which I tend to agree : factoring 1024 bits number is a probably a better target since SSL key exchange is mostly done through RSA