Encryption Leaves DES Behind
Nothing moves fast in the world of encryption, which may help explain why the U.S. is only now about to leave 56-bit DES behind for new encryption schemes.
It's been a long time coming, almost 20 years, in fact. The Data Encryption Standard has long outlived its usefulness. But the new Advanced Encryption Standard sets out key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits. How much stronger is AES? The National Institutes of Standards and Technology says a machine that could crack DES in just one second would need 149 trillion years to do the same to a 128-bit AES key.
