Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Data Encryption Standard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Data Encryption Standard (DES)

Self nomination. I think this is a reasonably comprehensive article, and (hopefully) reasonably comprehensible; it's structured so that the more technical and mathematical aspects appear later in the article, so (fingers crossed) it's useful to both specialist and non-specialist. — Matt 05:33, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Support. A remarkably good article. Perhaps too technical for the main page, but that's not for this page to decide. As an article, I thought (having read it through once) it was very well structured, and not overwhelmingly technical. Our authors on codes and cryptanalysis have done a remarkable job here, and more of their work needs recognition. Jwrosenzweig 18:28, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. A simply fantastic, detailed, well researched and cited article. The one question I had, was isn't triple-DES just as vulnerable to brute force attacks? I thought specialized hardware was able to break that within 24 hrs too. That would negate the "The algorithm is believed to be secure..." sentence. - Taxman 19:06, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your comments :) Regarding Triple DES, the scheme uses a key of 112 or 168 bits (depending on whether you use the 2 or 3 key version), and that takes it out of the reach of brute force attacks for a while (we can currently attack 64–72 bits, if distributed.net is anything to go by). There are theoretical attacks on Triple DES that reduce the security to 108 bits (for the three key version), but the algorithm is safe enough in practice. I've tweaked the "secure" sentence to note this. (Triple DES needs fixing, as well). — Matt 12:36, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Matt's right on this. With an effectively longer key, Triple DES is much less vulnerable than plain DES -- certainly as to brute force attack anyway. But note that Triple DES is a particular use of DES thrice. Not just any such use is adequate. Some are trivially breakable. See the FIPS definition. ww 15:58, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Sorry, thought I'd added my support just above. Support. Very well done, enough non technical stuff for the non technical and the technical part is accurate for the technical. ww 16:03, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Support - Wow - great article. --mav 04:13, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. Cute page, very complete. Love the diagrams. --John Moser 05:55, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. James F. (talk) 14:31, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Support. An fine representative of what Wikipedia is at its best. prometheus1 08:05, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)