At 09:35 25.02.1998 -0700, you wrote:
>The 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption has been broken yet
>again, by a distributed computing effort using spare cycles of computers
>maintained by volunteers.
 ...
>The most recent contest was to break 56-bit DES encryption by brute
>force. The plaintext/cyphertext pair was released by RSA on January 13,
 ...
>Moreover, it's perfectly obvious that the 40-bit encryption allowed in
>products exported from the U.S. is completely useless: using just the
>computers I have here (and I have some real relics -- my newest system is
>over a year old!) I can recover a 40-bit key in at most 2-1/2 hours.
 ...

While I do agree with your posting, I do have a question, too.

Not sure what exactly was done in the above contest. Does "key recovery"
mean "I have a piece of cyphertext and plaintext and try to recover the
key used, hoping that I'll be able to use that key to decrypt other/future
ciphertext pieces I can get my hands on" or does it mean "I have a piece
of of cyphertext and try all possible keys until something reasonable is
returned as plaintext".

I'm not sure in which context the former scenario would help breaking
encrypted communications, as I typically won't have the cipher-/plaintext
pair, won't I?

Lars.