
Cryptographic Systems and Encryption Terminology
2-4
Hewlett-Packard Company Virtual Private Networking Concepts Guide
Data Encryption Standard (DES)
Data Encryption Standard (DES)
Data Encryption Standard (DES)
Data Encryption Standard (DES)
The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a well-known and
thoroughly tested cryptographic system. The DES algorithm is a
very complex symmetric algorithm that specifies that data be
encrypted in 64-bit blocks. A 64-bit block of clear text goes into
the algorithm along with a 56-bit key. The result is a 64-bit block
of cipher text. Since the key size is fixed at 56 bits, the number
of keys available (the key space) is 256 different keys (about
72,000,000,000,000,000 keys). This is a huge increase over the
size of the key space in simple cryptographic systems.
A recent report by a group of scientists from AT&T Research,
Sun Microsystems, the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science,
the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Bell Northern Research
and others, entitled "Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric
Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security (Blaze, Diffie,
Rivest, Schneier, Shimomura, Thompson and Wiener)" found
that a pedestrian hacker with US $400 to spend requires about 38
years of effort to decode data encrypted with DES with its large
key space. Unfortunately, they also determined that a large
organization with US $300 million to spend could crack a 56-bit
key space in about 12 seconds, using brute force techniques.
They estimate that a 90-bit key protects data for about 20 years
in the face of expected advances in computing power.
Related
Related
Related
Related
Information
Information
Information
Information
Triple Pass DES (page 2-5)
3DES (page 2-7)
Outer Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) (page 2-8)