Re: fast des

[Jay Adams <jka@ece.cmu.edu>]

>    I don't know of any 2.4 gbps DES chips, but DEC has built a 1 gbps
>    chip.
>   ....  Key-loading is a different operation,
>    and that might not go nearly as fast.  Any hardware assists (i.e., DMA)
>    would be for the data, not for the next key to use on the same block of
>    data.
>
> Usually the limiting factor is examining the <ostensibly> decrypted data
> for statistically significant patterns indicating that you have the
> correct key.  The fast DES chips don't help with this at all.  A known
> plaintext attack, of course, doesn't have this problem, but these are
> probably of limited interest in real applications.

If you were interested in cracking DES, I wonder if you couldn't just
build the hardware out of FPGAs.  That way, you could make key loading
and the decrypted data test fast as well.

- Jay