what is DES (Data Encryption Standard)?

DES (Data Encryption Standard)

"when we speak about security, then it must be clear to us that what sort of algorithms are used to achieve such securities. DES (Data Encryption Standard) algorithm is one of them, which is used to achieve a genuine security level. DES also has a successor named AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)".

DES(Data Encryption Standard) is an algorithm which is designed to achieve data security so that confidential data can be protected from hackers or unsolicited use. DES works on symmetric key encryption technique which uses same private key to encrypt or decrypt the data, and the private key is well known by both (sender or receiver). By means of this algorithm we can change or encrypt any data into a different or non readable form so that if hackers or intruders steal that data they could not understand it. Non encrypted data usually refer as plain text while the encrypted data is termed as ciphertext. DES was designed by IBM in early 1970 to protect its data and it was adopted by FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) in 1977 to protect or encrypt its sensitive informations and conversations.

DES is an old standard which has been superseded by its more secure standard named AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). DES has been obsoleted by market standard because it was weak, though not easy to breach or decrypt by not all persons rather than specialist. It uses 64-bit encryption technique to encrypt data. Where 64-bit means a block of 64-bits are used to encrypt at a time rather than encrypting a single bit at a time. In 64-bit 8-bits are used for redundancy check, and only 56-bits are used for private key. Later on more successor or standards are introduced to achieve more security, which is called 3DES. In 3DES 3 different keys are used to encrypt data in 3 steps. It did not get lots of attention because it was slower than DES.

Though DES is an strong encryption technique to cypher or encrypt data but it only uses 56-bit for private key. The more length a key has, more difficult to guess. DES standard has been breach or decoded by using brute force attack. Brute force attack used to achieve the private key after applying lots of combinations like to find out 56-bits key total of 2^56 (72,057,594,037,927,936) attempts are needed. But if someone get the key by means of brute force attack which is obviously time consuming and not a child's play, then hacker can easily break the encryption thereafter because same private key is used to encrypt or cipher and decrypt or decipher the data.

DES used in a wide area because its simplicity, it is used in sim cards, smart cards, modems and set top boxes. All confidential data like Credit card number , passwords and CVVs are encrypted before receiving by the servers by means of these algorithms to protect our credentials from intruders or hackers.
For more information on brute force attack and symmetric key encryption you can read my previous posts.

Please keep learning from computerflicks, because it is beyond computing.