DES Breakability / Re: CBenson's Data Encryption Algorithm

[Phil Ngai]

Although the NSA may claim it would take them 10 years to break
text encrypted with DES, I would like to point out that there is at
least one IC (I won't say whose) that can encrypt at 1.7 megabytes
per second. That's equivalent to trying 242,857 56 bit keys per second.

60 sec * 60 min * 24 hr * 365 days = 31,536,000 sec
   ---      ---      ---      ----            ----
   min      hr       day      year            year

2 ** 56 = 7.2 x 10 ** 16

If you had 10,000 of these devices operating in parallel you could try
all 2 ** 56 combinations in one year. On the average, you'd get it in 6 months.
If you had a million, you'd get a solution in 2 days.

These calculations are rather simplistic but show what is possible I think.

Did I mention that AMD got a large order from the NSA recently? Oh, I'm
not supposed to talk about it. (just kidding, everyone)
-- 
Phil Ngai (408) 749-5286 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!phil