DES has long ago been considered insecure. Triple-DES
still has a few people that believe in it, I'm not one of
them.
A common miss conception about PGP is that is a Public Key
system for the data. Only the KEY's are exchanged in Public
Key Format. The actual Data is encoded using IDEA, which
I've not heard any thing bad about. It is a derivative of
XOR and Shift type method. More people need to muck about
the source code and documentation...
On public key technologies in general if you already know 'all'
of the Prim Numbers it becomes much less secure. The Gov.
was up to 2^251-1 in about 1977. This web site
http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm is (was?) keeping track of
what we are up to today.
The absolute best type of encryption today is one that is a
off shoot of Random Dot Stereograms. Even if ET shows up
with unimagined computer power they are still not breakable
with out the overlay-key. Down side is they are not really
all that practical for day to day use.
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