On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Peter Trei wrote:
Since it looks like the US government will be allowing the export of 56 bit espionage-enabled software, it's time to kill single DES.
As some of you will recall, a while back I wondered aloud about the feasibility of brute-forcing DES on general purpose machines, ala the RC4-40 crack last year. [...]
Yes, I KNOW that a hardware based cracker is a LOT more efficient, but between the up-front cost and the difficulty of design and production, it's less likely to get done. (Still if someone wants to buy me a nice FPGA board, I'll see what I can do).
I understand that *two* independent efforts cracking single DES using FPGAs are currently being set up. If the parties whish to come forward, my offer to donate to this cause still stands. --Lucky