From: holland@CS.ColoState.EDU (douglas craig holland)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 93 17:10:01 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: !FLAME: breaking DES
Message-ID: <9310140009.AA06153@beethoven>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


     OK, I sort of wanted to break up the constant flaming on this thread,
so I thought I would introduce my own (admittedly ignorant) way to break
DES.

     1. Start with a full keysearch of all 2^56 possible DES keys.

     2. If you have plaintext to work with, compare each sample 
decryption with the plaintext.

     2a. If you don't have plaintext, I would try washing the decryptions
through a pattern searching algorithm that would include a dictionary,
patterns from compression programs like PKZip, machine language instructions,
and any other possible form of communication that can be represented as
a binary string.

     At least that's how I would do it.  If anyone has any suggestions,
corrections, etc.  I wouldn't mind hearing them.

Doug