The Day Hackers Broke the Data Encryption Standard
On June 17, 1997 , a group of hackers successfully cracked the Data Encryption Standard (DES) , a widely used encryption method that was once considered unbreakable. This breakthrough exposed vulnerabilities in digital security and led to significant changes in encryption technology. Explanation of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a symmetric-key block cipher that encrypts data in 64-bit blocks using a 56-bit key . It was developed by IBM in the early 1970s based on an earlier cipher called LUCIFER . DES operates using a Feistel network structure , which ensures that encryption and decryption follow similar processes. Later, in 1977 , was adopted as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for securing sensitive but unclassified government data. The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) , with input from the National Security Agency (NSA) , selected DES due to its balanced Feistel netwo...
