3 ms·
On the other hand, DES is an example of where people were sure that NSA persuaded IBM to weaken it but, to quote Bruce Schneier, "It took the academic community
by TMWNN 3y ago
On the other hand, DES is an example of where people were sure that NSA persuaded IBM to weaken it but, to quote Bruce Schneier, "It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA 'tweaks' actually improved the security of DES". <https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/saluting-the-data-encryption-legacy/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/saluting-the-data-encrypti...>
- red_admiral 3y agoHalf true. The S-box thing strengthened the cipher. Cutting the key length from 64 bits to 56 arguably weakened the cipher.
- staunton 3y agoNSA did persuade them to weaken DES by shortening the key size. The "magic S-boxes" were chosen to be resistant to differential cryptanalysis (which was successfully kept secret for decades to come) but that doesn't change the fact NSA had the means to break DES by brute force.