Deciphering a message encoded with the US Government’s Data Encryption Standard (DES) is no longer even one day’s work. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)’s purpose-built computer Deep Crack, working in concert with thousands of volunteers on distributed.net, cracked a 56-bit DES-encrypted message in just 22 and a quarter hours. The challengers were lucky; they found the key after searching only 24% of the keyspace. The message read See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999). By breaking the 24-hour barrier, the EFF won $10,000 from RSA Data Security Inc. It’s been a helluva conference, said RSA president Jim Bidzos of his company’s eighth annual cryptographers’ gabfest. Yesterday we packed the place out, and today they broke DES.
