DES Challenges
| Company type | Cryptography contest |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information security |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder | RSA Security |
Area served | Global |
The DES Challenges consisted of a series of brute force attack competitions launched by RSA Security to reveal vulnerabilities within the Data Encryption Standard.
The Competitions
Initiated in 1997, the inaugural challenge was completed in 96 days by the DESCHALL Project.
In early 1998, DES Challenge II-1 was broken by distributed.net after 39 days. The decrypted text read: "The secret message is: Many hands make light work."
During July 1998, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) successfully solved DES Challenge II-2 in only 56 hours using their specialized Deep Crack device. Although the machine cost $250,000 to construct, EFF received a $10,000 prize. This event highlighted how rapidly well-resourced groups could decrypt data secured with DES. The revealed message stated: "The secret message is: It's time for those 128-, 192-, and 256-bit keys."
DES Challenge III, completed in January 1999 through a joint effort between distributed.net and Deep Crack, discovered the key in merely 22 hours and 15 minutes. The plaintext message read: "See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999)".
Response
After these successful demonstrations, FBI director Louis Freeh informed Congress that existing technology and brute force methods were inadequate to break DES in high-stakes situations.
It was only when specialized hardware reduced cracking durations to under a day that both federal agencies and industry recognized DES as outdated. Although the National Institute of Standards and Technology had begun developing what became the Advanced Encryption Standard in 1997, it continued to endorse DES up until October 1999 via FIPS 46-3, recommending Triple DES for enhanced security.