Differences between version 5 and predecessor to the previous major change of DES.
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| Newer page: | version 5 | Last edited on Wednesday, June 2, 2004 12:53:18 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 3 | Last edited on Wednesday, June 2, 2004 8:24:51 am | by StuartYeates | Revert |
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A very widely used and widely studied encryption algorithm, now being gradually replaced by [AES]. There are a number of variants, including [3DES].
The workings of the algorithm are explained: http://www.tropsoft.com/strongenc/des.htm and the official page at the [NIST]: http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip46-2.htm
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+[DES] is to be replaced with [AES], it's successor.
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+The "Standard" part of the name is because DES is/was the algorithm used by many US government agencies, and therefore also by many companies.
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+[DES] was designed by people at [IBM] with help from the [NSA]. A lot of controversy about how the [NSA] had placed a back door/flaw in [DES] so they could decrypt all messages that were encrypted with [DES]. (The NSA had recommended that DES implementations don't use certain parts of the keyspace). After about 30 years of [DES] being used a new attack on ciphers was found which almost all ciphers at the time fell to, including that part of the [DES] keyspace. It is believed that the [NSA] probably knew about this attack (30 years before everyone else!) and "fixed" [DES] so that it was safe against it. Anyway, take this little story with a grain of salt, and put on your tin foil hat next time you're outdoors.
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CategoryCryptography
