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Acronym for Data Encryption Standard

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

DES is to be replaced with AES, it's successor.

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. After about 30 years of DES being used a new attack on ciphers was found which almost all ciphers at the time fell to, except DES. 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.


CategoryCryptography