The DES Challenges were a series of

brute force attack In cryptography, a brute-force attack consists of an attacker submitting many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct ...

contests created by RSA Security to highlight the lack of security provided by the

Data Encryption Standard The Data Encryption Standard (DES ) is a symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of digital data. Although its short key length of 56 bits makes it too insecure for modern applications, it has been highly influential in the advancement of cryp ...

The Contests

The first challenge began in 1997 and was solved in 96 days by the DESCHALL Project. DES Challenge II-1 was solved by

distributed.net Distributed.net is a volunteer computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise idle CPU or GPU time. It is governed by Distributed Computing Technologies, Incorporated (DCTI), a non-profit organization under U. ...

in 39 days in early 1998. The plaintext message being solved for was "The secret message is: Many hands make light work." DES Challenge II-2 was solved in just 56 hours in July 1998, by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), with their purpose-built

Deep Crack In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed "Deep Crack") is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1998, to perform a brute force search of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher's key space – that is, to decr ...

machine. EFF won $10,000 for their success, although their machine cost $250,000 to build. The contest demonstrated how quickly a rich corporation or government agency, having built a similar machine, could decrypt ciphertext encrypted with DES. The text was revealed to be "The secret message is: It's time for those 128-, 192-, and 256-bit keys." DES Challenge III was a joint effort between distributed.net and Deep Crack. The key was found in just 22 hours 15 minutes in January 1999, and the plaintext was "See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999)".

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After the DES had been shown to be breakable,

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

director Louis Freeh told Congress, "That is not going to make a difference in a kidnapping case. It is not going to make a difference in a national security case. We don't have the technology or the brute force capability to get to this information." It was not until special purpose hardware brought the time down below 24 hours that both industry and federal authorities had to admit that the DES was no longer viable. Although the National Institute of Standards and Technology started work on what became the

Advanced Encryption Standard The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. AES is a variant ...

in 1997, they continued to endorse the DES as late as October 1999, with FIPS 46-3. However, Triple DES was preferred.

References

{{reflist Cryptography contests Data Encryption Standard Recurring events established in 1997

The Contests

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See also

References