On this day in 1997 a group known as DESCHALL (short for DES Challenge) was the first to publicly crack the Data Encryption Standard, the strongest legally exportable encryption software in the United States at the time. The challenge was proposed by RSA Security with a prize of $10,000 to the first team that could crack the 56-bit symmetric encryption. The winning team was a small group of computer scientists who had thousands of volunteers running software in the background of their own machines, connected by the Internet. After five months of work, the group announced their achievement and won the prize money, as well as proving that the 56-bit encryption was just not secure enough.
![](https://sourceforge.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/shutterstock_153502829.png)
If 56-bit encryption isn’t secure enough, then what is? And, btw, when is somebody gonna come up with an algorithm or software to eliminate adware, viruses, spamming, and phishing attempts? Or is that too unrealistic?