The NYT article is way overblown; the attack is only against the particular mode in the standard and requires something like 2^64 texts. It's great work, but not a very practical attack. At 07:44 AM 3/31/98 -0500, John Young wrote:
NYT-Markoff reports today on Biham and Knudsen's paper on 3DES weakness, "Cryptanalysis of the ANSI X9.52 CBCM Mode," noted here a few days ago.
The ANSI X9.F1 committee has held up implementing its standard as a result, and may have to wait for AES. Credit is given to the worldwide DES crack.
See a mirror:
Get the Biham/Knudsen paper:
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