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.

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.

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.

CategoryCryptography