Do not be afraid of them any more. Over the decades they have become our good companions, and will become even better ones in the future. This article has was written as part of a series of articles for Infosecurity Europe 2000. A Look at the Advanced Encryption Standard Children of DES - A Look at the Advanced Encryption Standard Written by Furqan Syed of Biodata Cryptography has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. From intricate codes, comprising of numbers and text to forms of invisible ink, encryption has played a part in communication throughout the ages.
Today is no different, with computers being the tools for communication.
The only way to protect information from hackers is by using a method of encryption. With increasingly powerful encryption processors and the costs of computing power halving every 16 months, it is essential to always 'update' cryptographic algorithms. DES is a symmetric cryptosystem, specifically a 16-round Feistel cipher and was originally designed for implementation in hardware. DES can also be used for single-user encryption, such as to store files on a hard disk in encrypted form. Three DES encryptions with three different keys.