Page "Data Encryption Standard" Paragraph 4

On 17 March 1975, the proposed DES was published in the Federal Register.

Public comments were requested, and in the following year two open workshops were held to discuss the proposed standard.

There was some criticism from various parties, including from public-key cryptography pioneers Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, citing a shortened key length and the mysterious " S-boxes " as evidence of improper interference from the NSA.

The suspicion was that the algorithm had been covertly weakened by the intelligence agency so that they — but no-one else — could easily read encrypted messages.

Alan Konheim ( one of the designers of DES ) commented, " We sent the S-boxes off to Washington.

They came back and were all different.

" The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the NSA's actions to determine whether there had been any improper involvement.

In the unclassified summary of their findings, published in 1978, the Committee wrote: