isr.co.ro : glossary Data Encryption Standard (DES) A government-sponsored standard for encoding data so it can't be read except by someone with a matching software key. Using either software or special encryption chips, the encoding key is applied to blocks of data to produce unrecognizable bit streams. In theory, a DES message can be cracked by applying enough computing power for long enough. But if the keys are made large enough--at this point, more than about 80 bits--the necessary time and resources are beyond practical possibility. Currently, the U.S. government considers encryption technology a military asset (technically, a "munition"), because it makes it easier for other countries to hide information and harder for U.S. intelligence services to ferret it out. Consequently, U.S. law forbids the export of software or chips containing the DES algorithm. But most software firms consider this absurd, because anyone can buy such packages in retail stores, and foreign scientists have developed comparable codes of their own.