4 ms·
I don't think DES is an accurate comparison here. The world abandoned DES because a) everyone suspected it had a backdoor, and b) it was demonstrably broken by
by kedean 12y ago
I don't think DES is an accurate comparison here. The world abandoned DES because a) everyone suspected it had a backdoor, and b) it was demonstrably broken by the EFF in 1999. We rely on a primitive until someone who's job it is finds holes in it. Engineers don't need to be inventing new encyrption.
- tptacek 12y agoDES was abandoned because its key size was too small. It also has a block size that's too small for safety, which is why we don't use Triple DES or Blowfish as bulk ciphers either. Ever since Biham and Shamir published the differential cryptanalysis, we've known that NSA didn't backdoor DES, but rather helped strengthen it against that attack. Concerns over a backdoor had nothing to do with it.