Since the list keeper has requested, let us let the DES parallel breaking die, for the time being at least. I mentioned a possible Cypherpunk project to set up a network of parallel DES de-cryptors linked by cryptographically secure anonymous remailers to avoid obvious detection (although one could argue all those flops in the night might speak for themselves). A quick test shows the Sparcstation IIPX doing about 100 decryptions per second in a typical unloaded system from a user account (these are relatively small decryptions...we assume here we are decrypting a text which only a small portion needs to be decrypted to reveal its appropriate entropy measure). Or over eight unused hours at night, in the neighborhood of 3 million decryptions. Let's even assume we can marshall 5000 similar machines through our combined talents, that's 15*10^9 decryptions. Keeping in mind the total 56-bit keyspace is 72*10^15, we're still talking around 5 million nights to solve the problem (~13,000 years). If we want to solve one system per month, it looks like we can only handle about 38 bits worth of keyspace. Not very impressive. So, until the next technological leap, we can probably forget about this.
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nobody@alumni.cco.caltech.edu