Sometimes you have to do good engineering to straighten out twisted politics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that was founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are protected as new communications technologies emerge, and O"Reilly, the premier publisher of computer and computer-related books, team up to produce Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Politics & Chip Design. By doing this they have exploded the government-supported myth that the Data Encryption Standard (DES) has real security.

National Security Agency and FBI officials say our civil liberties must be curtailed because the government can't crack the security of DES to wiretap bad guys. But somehow a tiny nonprofit has designed and built a $200,000 machine that cracks DES in a week. Who's lying, and why?

For the first time, the book reveals full technical details on how researchers and data-recovery engineers can build a working DES Cracker. It includes design specifications and board schematics, as well as full source code for the custom chip, a chip simulator, and the software that drives the system. The U.S. government makes it illegal to publish these details on the Web, but they're printed here in a form that's easy to read and understand, legal to publish, and convenient for scanning into your computer.

The Data Encryption Standard withstood the test of time for twenty years. This book shows exactly how it was brought down. Every cryptographer, security designer, and student of cryptography policy should read this book to understand how the world changed as it fell.

 Table of Contents
Foreword 

Preface 

Chapter 1. Overview
   Politics of Decryption
   Goals
   History of DES Cracking
   EFF's DES Cracker Project
   Architecture
   Who Else Is Cracking DES?
   What To Do If You Depend On DES
   Conclusion
Chapter 2. Design for DES Key Search Array
   On-Chip Registers
   Commands
   Search Unit Operation
   Sample Programming Descriptions
   Scalability and Performance
   Host Computer Software
   Glossary
Chapter 3. Design for DES Key Search Array Chip-Level Specification
   ASIC Description
   Board description
   Read and Write Timing
   Addressing Registers
   All-active Signal
   ASIC Register Allocation
Chapter 4. Scanning the Source Code
   The Politics of Cryptographic Source Code
   The Paper Publishing Exception
   Scanning
   Bootstrapping
Chapter 5. Software Source Code
Chapter 6. Chip Source Code
Chapter 7. Chip Simulator Source Code
Chapter 8. Hardware Board Schematics
   Board Schematics
   Sun-4/470 backplane modifications
   PC Interfaces
   Errata
Chapter 9. Breaking One Million DES Keys by Yvo Desmedt
   Abstract
   Introduction
   The basic idea
   Details of such a machine
   Obtained results and remarks
   Conclusion
   Acknowledgement
Chapter 10. Architectural Considerations for Cryptanalytic Hardware
   Abstract
   Introduction
   Motivation
   Related work
   Technical Approach
   Design and Analysis
   Future work
   Conclusions
   Acknowledgements
   Availability
   References
Chapter 11. Efficient DES Key Search. An Update by Michael J. Wiener
   Advancing Technology
   Programmable Hardware
   Conclusion
Chapter 12. Authors
   The Electronic Frontier Foundation
   John Gilmore
   Cryptography Research
   Paul Kocher
   Advanced Wireless Technologies