Can FBI/NSA break DES?

["Nick Papadakis" <nick@martigny.ai.mit.edu>]

> The FBI has shown that they dont know a backdoor in DES or at least
> they wont use it against suspects. 

	For what it is worth, an FBI agent here in Boston once told me
a story (over lunch) about a drug case involving a seized PC with DES
encrypted files.  The FBI folks called up "some friends" at NSA, who
were able to decrypt the files.  They couldn't use the info in court
(since that would reveal what the NSA could do), but the information
was valuable to them nonetheless.

	Now, I don't know whether to believe this or not.  There was
at least one interesting detail/inconsistency in the story (he
mentioned that when they got the PC back from NSA they were somehow
able to tell by examining some file-modification times that the
decrypt had taken 12 minutes.  It's not immediately obvious to me why
this would be so.)  The guy who told me the story isn't particularly
technical; neither is he totally non-technical (at one point he told
another story about how difficult it is to explain hexadecimal to a
jury.)  I don't think he would be above a little desinformatsiya.  I
don't see what he would gain from it, other than appearing to be more
technical/powerful/in-the-know than he really is.

	That NSA can break DES is widely suspected, even if unproved.


		Cheers,


			- nick

P.s. 	The truly funny postscript to this story is that halfway
through the aforementioned lunch with this FBI fellow, I looked down
and realized I was wearing one of the hack LOD T-Shirts.  After I
finished choking on my biriyani, he wanted to know where *he* could
get one ...