DES Vulnerable, Why?

[KentBorg at aol.com]

It seems the TLAs (in a weak moment) let slip that DES was getting old and
creaky and vulnerable.  The story is that that is what sent the TLAs off on
their search for a new encryption standard.  (Unfortunately, they got their
mission reversed and decided the need was to *read* plaintext not encrypt
it.)

My question: if triple-DES is so damn tough to break, what is wrong with DES?
 Triple-DES is a trivial variation on DES.

Is it likely that DES's frailities are not the ones we compute with all those
big numbers?

Given the public portions of DES's history, what DES weaknesses make sense?


-kb, the Kent who is 300+ emails behind due to a biz trip and a damp
notebook.


--
Kent Borg                                                  +1 (617) 776-6899
kentborg at world.std.com
kentborg at aol.com
          Proud to claim 39:30 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!