Comment Re:But but but (Score 5, Interesting) 536
Ah the old NSA DES conspiracy theory. The NSA suggested two changes to DES: 1) shorten the key 2) changed the S-boxes. They gave no public explanation for the latter and for years the story was that this somehow introduced a backdoor into the algorithm. The truth came out over a decade later:
"Some of the suspicions about hidden weaknesses in the S-boxes were allayed in 1990, with the independent discovery and open publication by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir of differential cryptanalysis, a general method for breaking block ciphers. The S-boxes of DES were much more resistant to the attack than if they had been chosen at random, strongly suggesting that IBM knew about the technique in the 1970s. This was indeed the case; in 1994, Don Coppersmith published some of the original design criteria for the S-boxes. According to Steven Levy, IBM Watson researchers discovered differential cryptanalytic attacks in 1974 and were asked by the NSA to keep the technique secret."
Of course, they could still be lying, better keep the tinfoil hat on.