Up until recently, the main standard for encrypting data was a symmetric algorithm known as the Data Encryption Standard (DES). However, this has now been replaced by a new standard known as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) which we will look at later. DES is a 64 bit block cipher which means that it encrypts data 64 bits at a time. This is contrasted to a stream cipher in which only one bit at a time (or sometimes small groups of bits such as a byte) is encrypted.
DES was the result of a research project set up by International Business Machines (IBM) corporation in the late 1960’s which resulted in a cipher known as LUCIFER. In the early 1970’s it was decided to commercialise LUCIFER and a number of significant changes were introduced. IBM was not the only one involved in these changes as they sought technical advice from the National Security Agency (NSA) (other outside consultants were involved but it is likely that the NSA were the major contributors from a technical point of view). The altered version of LUCIFER was put forward as a proposal for the new national encryption standard requested by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). It was finally adopted in 1977 as the Data Encryption Standard - DES (FIPS PUB 46).
Some of the changes made to LUCIFER have been the subject of much controversy even to the present day. The most notable of these was the key size. LUCIFER used a key size of 128 bits however this was reduced to 56 bits for DES. Even though DES actually accepts a 64 bit key as input, the remaining eight bits are used for parity checking and have no effect on DES’s security. Outsiders were convinced that the 56 bit key was an easy target for a brute force attack due to its extremely small size. The need for the parity checking scheme was also questioned without satisfying answers
Another controversial issue was that the S-boxes used were designed under classified conditions and no reasons for their particular design were ever given. This led people to assume that the NSA had introduced a “trapdoor” through which they could decrypt any data encrypted by DES even without knowledge of the key. One startling discovery was that the S-boxes appeared to be secure against an attack known as Differential Cryptanalysis which was only publicly discovered by Biham and Shamir in 1990. This suggests that the NSA were aware of this attack in 1977; 13 years earlier! In fact the DES designers claimed that the reason they never made the design specifications for the S-boxes available was that they knew about a number of attacks that weren’t public.knowledge at the time and they didn’t want them leaking - this is quite a plausible claim as differential cryptanalysis has shown. However, despite all this controversy, in 1994 NIST reformed DES for government use for a further five years for use in areas other than “classifed”.
DES of course isn’t the only symmetric cipher. There are many others, each with varying levels of complexity. Such ciphers include: IDEA, RC4, RC5, RC6 and the new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is an important algorithm and was originally meant to replace DES (and its more secure variant triple DES) as the standard algorithm for non-classi?ed material. However as of 2003, AES with key sizes of 192 and 256 bits has been found to be secure enough to protect information up to top secret. Since its creation, AES had underdone intense scrutiny as one would expect for an algorithm that is to be used as the standard. To date it has withstood all attacks but the search is still on and it remains to be seen whether or not this will last. We will look at AES later in the course.