Data Encryption Standard
lastmod 2018-08-17created 2015-11-291 edits
DES (Data Encryption Standard) is a type of block cipher, adopted as a national standard by the US NBS (National Bureau of Standards, now NIST). DES is a symmetric-key cipher and uses a 56-bit key. DES brute-force attack hardware built by the EFF.
DES is now known to be insecure. One reason is that the 56-bit key length is too short for today's computing environment, and claims have also been raised that DES contains a backdoor that would let government agencies easily break it using a special method. In 1998, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) built brute-force attack hardware that breaks the cipher within 56 hours, and in 1999 it built hardware that breaks it within 22 hours and 15 minutes.
Triple-DES, which applies DES three times, is known to be more secure than DES, and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) has now been adopted as the new standard and is used in place of DES.