The Computers of Star Trek by Lois H. Gresh Page B

who believe in Moore’s Law, this means that the DES-cracking machine will cost $110,000 in five years, and it might crack the key in two days. Further, in the landmark The Electronic Privacy Papers , coauthored by Mr. Schneier and David Banisar, it’s noted that “Within a few years, experts anticipate that DES will no longer be secure from even low-level attacks.” 4
    Another symmetric technique is triple DES, which inputs three 56-bit keys to an array of three DES chips. Triple-DES is supposedly too slow for various applications. Then there’s IDEA, which uses a 128-bit key on 64-bit blocks of data.
    In January of 1997, hoping to replace DES, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) asked for a new Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES). In June of 1998, fifteen encryption algorithms were submitted for review. At the time of the millenium—scheduled for January of 2000—the final AES will be chosen to replace DES. 5
    One of the really cool things about the AES contest is that three of the submissions have already been cracked.
    It’s amusing to note the names of the encryption techniques, as reported by Mr. Schneier (his comments are in quotes): 6
    CAST — 256 . Slower than other AES submissions.
    LOCKI—97 . Already cracked.
    Frog . Already cracked.
    Mars. “IBM gave the world DES, and Mars is its submission to AES ... the pedigree and impressive design document make this a strong candidate despite its ‘kitchen sink’ appearance.”
    Magenta . Already cracked.
    RC6. From Ron Rivest at RSA Data Security, Inc.
    Decorrelated Fast Cipher (DFC).
    Serpent.
    E2.
    Rijndael.
    DEAL . A variety of triple-DES.
    Hasty Pudding Cipher (HPC) . “Take everything you can think of, throw it in a cipher, shake well, then add some attitude. ‘Bizarre’ is all I can say.”
    Crypton.
    Twofish.
    SAFER +.
    We mention RC6, so we should also mention its predecessors. All come from RSA, which is not only the name of Ron Rivest’s company but also the name of yet another encryption technique.
RC, in the wonderful world of computer acronyms, stands for Ron’s Code. It also stands for Rivest Cipher. RCI, missing from the list, was a design that flopped. RC3, also missing, was cracked before it was released. RC2 uses a variable-length key on a 64-bit block of data. RC4 is the same as RC2, except the former is a stream cipher (operates on the plaintext one bit or one byte at a time) rather than a block cipher (operates on the plaintext in blocks of data). RC5 permits you to change the block size, key length, and the number of iterations used for encryption. The RC algorithms are all symmetric encryption techniques.
    RSA, on the other hand, is an asymmetric technique, also known as a public key approach. This means that the encryption key differs from the decryption key—often called the private key. RSA multiplies two huge prime numbers to obtain its decryption key. Factoring the key using today’s computers could require several billion years.
    PGP combines IDEA for encryption, RSA for key management and digital signatures, and MD5 for hashing functions.
    So what is MD5? There are more encryption techniques than fleas on a dog. Before MD5, we had MD2 and MD4. All were created by Ron Rivest of RSA, Ron Rivest’s company. And even if we told you about MD5 and hashing, you still wouldn’t know about Blowfish and Twofish. Or Panama.
    In the not-so-distant future, it’s hypothetically possible that a digitally encrypted transmission could be further encrypted with the fingerprint of the receiver. Thus, only the specific person being sent the message would be able to read it. But if this technique becomes common, hackers will quickly develop methods to duplicate fingerprints—
    Hey, haven’t criminals done that already?

    Only when biometrics reach the level of nanotech will we see real biometric encryption—in three or four hundred