- DES (Data Encryption Standard) is a symmetric block cipher algorithm that encrypts data in 64-bit blocks using a 56-bit key. It was the first encryption standard adopted by the U.S. government for protecting sensitive unclassified federal government information.
- DES works by performing 16 rounds of complex substitutions and permutations on each data block, encrypting it using the key. It has various modes of operation like ECB, CBC, CFB, OFB, and CTR that specify how it operates on data.
- In 1998, DES was broken using a brute force attack by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in just 3 days, showing the need for stronger algorithms like AES which replaced DES as the encryption standard