Is DES or 3DES still being used today?

des 3des
svens picture svens · Oct 24, 2009 · Viewed 20.6k times · Source

I've written a DES implementation as an exercice and am now wondering if and where (triple-)DES is used today.

I've read about banking cards using it, but I can't find any reliable source for it.

Answer

yfeldblum picture yfeldblum · Oct 24, 2009

Triple-DES is still in use today but is widely considered a legacy encryption algorithm. DES is inherently insecure, while Triple-DES has much better security characteristics but is still considered problematic.

NIST is the government organization that standardizes on cryptographic algorithms. The most current symmetric-key encryption algorithm NIST standard is AES, the Advanced Encryption Standard. In fact, there were a number of good nominations to be NIST's AES, including the Rijndael algorithm which became AES, as well as Bruce Schneier's Blowfish, the Twofish algorithm, and the Serpent algorithm.

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