DES Challenges

"[2] DES Challenge II-2 was solved in just 56 hours in July 1998, by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), with their purpose-built Deep Crack machine.

The contest demonstrated how quickly a rich corporation or government agency, having built a similar machine, could decrypt ciphertext encrypted with DES.

The key was found in just 22 hours 15 minutes in January 1999, and the plaintext was "See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999)".

[4] After the DES had been shown to be breakable, FBI director Louis Freeh told Congress, "That is not going to make a difference in a kidnapping case.

"[5] It was not until special purpose hardware brought the time down below 24 hours that both industry and federal authorities had to admit that the DES was no longer viable.