On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 05:07:06PM -0400, Sandy Harris wrote: > "Janusz A. Urbanowicz" wrote: > > > Is there really no other cipher option than DES? It's broken, you know. > > > FreeSWAN is deliberately explcuding it, even though it's part of the > > > standard. I wouldn't support it in new projects. > > I wouldn't dare to call DES broken. It is the most researched algorithm we > > have, with the only weakness of key size (which is cured by using 3DES). > Single DES has been literally broken several times. If you don't want to call > it "broken", perhaps "weak", or "insecure" or "obsolete"? No. None of the above. Simply "inadequate". There may be things for which is it "adequate", that I can not judge. For what we want to do now, in IPSec and securing data and transmissions and transactions, it simple is not up to the task. It has never been "broken", it simply is no longer up to the tasks. "Weak" implies an absolute measure of "strength" and, in fact, the issue is relative. It's strong compared to rot13 (which Adobe used in Ebooks) but pitiful compared to AES or IDEA. Calling it insecure requires the definition of what framework. I don't quite think I will argue with obsolete, since I agree that better options exist and I know of no real good reason to stick WITH DES, as long as you have the choice, so I guess that implies obsolete. But the bottom line is that it is simply inadequate for what we want to use a crypto algorithm for. But "inadequate" is a word that does not meet the requirements of the "argument by label and declaration" crowd. > There's a fairly detailed discussion in the FreeS/WAN documentation: > http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.91/doc/politics.html#desnotsecure FreeSwan issues are political, not technical. Hence the continuing ban on US contributions to the FreeSwan project to the continuing detriment to their credibility. (Sorry, Sandy, can't pass up a decent opportunity for a "low blow".) > Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system > Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/ Mike -- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@xxxxxxxxxxxx (The Mad Wizard) | (678) 463-0932 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it! Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
