Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!lll-crg!well!l5!gnu
From: gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: DES is no longer a government standard?
Message-ID: <321@l5.uucp>
Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 11:40:42 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.321
Posted: Thu Dec  5 11:40:42 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 16:57:21 EST
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 10

I heard a roomer that the gov't has quietly dropped the DES
"standard".  The rumor is that Adi Shamir invented a cipher very
similar to DES (using different permutations in the boxes) but designed
it with an easy way for him to decrypt things encoded with it.  He
presented his cipher to the standards bureaus, they thought it was
similar in security to DES, then he showed them the back door.  They
agreed that it was hard to tell whether this had been done when DES was
designed, so they decertified it.

Anybody know anything more solid than this?