DES & RC4-48 Challenges

[solman at MIT.EDU]

Dan wrote:

|Not having my copy of The Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data
|Encryption Standard handy, I'd like to know about the distributability
|of this type of DES attack.  Done right, we could significantly reduce
|the time complexity.
|	The main problem, of course, would be coordinating such an effort.  I
|seem to recall this attack requiring lots of known plaintexts.  Time
|to review the text, I suppose....
|	Does the Federal Reserve still use single-key DES?

The forms of differential cryptanalysis that I'm aware of require The
cracker to adaptively atack the encrypting or decrypting device. I
therefore do not believe that they are especially applicable to
financial transactions schemes, most of which change keys quite
frequently.

JWS