See: http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1111/des.htm Federal Computer Week, Nov 11, 1996. "DES set for overhaul." by HEATHER HARRELD The content is kind of thin, but it amounts to a statement that NIST is preparing a Federal Register request for a successor to DES. Most the article concerns the termendous hassle replacing DES will be for government agencies (FCW is a trade rag for people working with computers in the Federal and State sectors - I used to get it when I was at MITRE.) There's a truely clueless comment at the end, where Mike Schwartz of "Prime Factors Inc., an Oregon-based security firm" is quoted as saying "...DES shows no signs of weakening." ----------------------------- While 3DES-EDE is the obvious replacement, it would be far from an easy switch, since there are a huge number of fielded devices for handling the 64 bit single DES keys. I wonder how good a drop-in replacement could be made if the goal was to NOT have to replace the key handling infrastructure - just replace a single software module or chip. If we use the bits currently devoted to parity in DES keys for actual key data, we gain 8 bits, or a factor of x256 in the keyspace. If we further complicate the key schedule setup, so it's much slower than DES in both hardware and software (lots of rotates, multiplies, state, etc), we can make life a lot more difficult for brute force attacks. Maybe some version of Blowfish, using the same key twice - I have not studied Blowfish, so I don't know if this introduces an obvious weakness. Happy Thanksgiving! Peter Trei trei@process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei@process.com