I was in a bank today and some how I managed to get on the subject of encryption. While on this subject I found out that this particular bank's ATMs were just recently updated to triple DES (3DES) from DES. I thought someone hit me with a stun gun! First to even learn from a bank on what encryption they are using for their ATM's and second ATM's are a big part of the financial industry and DES encryption is easier to decrypt than most contemporary encryption algorithms (using a meet-in-the-middle attack) and they are just now being updated??? Yes 3DES is better but it isn't as good as some other algorithms because 3DES is also succeptable to meet-in-the-middle attacks just like DES. The only difference is the key size. In my cryptography class we had to decrypt cipher text that was encrypted using Double S-DES. This ended up being quite simple utilizing Cryptographic Analysis Program (CAP). No longer than 30 seconds and it was decrypted.
Attached below is the cipher text from a Double S-DES encryption. You also know that the word Double is some where in the plain text. What are the keys and what is the plain text? Note: this is different from the class assignment.
Attachment is below "Filed Under"