A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
This may be a stupid question but considering if you have the key you can get the original data, where is the boost in security in AES versus a simple obfuscation using a key? Is it in the complexity and variations of the underlying algorithm and not having many people that can reproduce it? Or is it the time factor of having to run through the algorithm thus increasing the sheer amount of time it takes for an attack?