I. `des will be totally insecure within ten years'

Cryptography. The very name conjures up images of secrecy and spying, with project code names like "Magic" and "Lucifer." And indeed until fairly recently data encryption was a shrouded capability, used almost exclusively by military and diplomatic organizations. The computerization of information processing and transmission has changed this. In response to a growing commercial need, the National Bureau of Standards has promulgated a national Data Encryption Standard, developed by IBM. The standard, called DES, can be implemented in software or on a single LSI chip and can be used with any computer to encrypt and decrypt transmitted data. A single-chip version should sell for about $10 in quantity production. But just how good is the protection offered by DES?