Every cryptographer, security designer, and student of cryptography policy should read this book to understand how the world changed as it fell. Cracking DES has been published only in print because US export controls on encryption make it a crime to publish such information on the Internet, but the book is designed to be easy to scan into computers. In the vast majority of countries, cryptography may be freely used, manufactured, and sold without restriction. There is a movement towards international relaxation of regulations relating to encryption products could with a rejection of mandatory key escrow and recovery policies. The OECD Cryptography Policy Guidelines and the Ministerial Declaration of the European Union argue for the liberalization of controls on cryptography and the development of marked-based, user driven cryptography products and services.
Export controls remain the most powerful obstacle to the free flow of encryption.
The revised Wassenaar Arrangement may roll back some of the liberalization sought by the OECD, particularly by restricting the key lengths of encryption that can be exported without approval licenses. But its reach is long. Kahn traces cryptology's origins to the advent of writing. It seems that as soon as people learned how to record their thoughts, they tried to figure out ways of keeping them hidden. He concludes with a few thoughts about encryption on the Internet.