ECCouncil Updated 212-81 Exam Questions and Answers by lilly-rose

DES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard

DES is insecure due to the relatively short 56-bit key size. In January 1999, distributed.net and the Electronic Frontier Foundation collaborated to publicly break a DES key in 22 hours and 15 minutes.

Explanation

Key Space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_space_(cryptography)

Algorithm's key space refers to the set of all possible permutations of a key.

To prevent an adversary from using a brute-force attack to find the key used to encrypt a message, the key space is usually designed to be large enough to make such a search infeasible. On average, half the key space must be searched to find the solution.

Another desirable attribute is that the key must be selected truly randomly from all possible key permutations. Should this not be the case, and the attacker is able to determine some factor that may influence how the key was selected, the search space (and hence also the search time) can be significantly reduced. Humans do not select passwords randomly, therefore attackers frequently try a dictionary attack before a brute force attack, as this approach can often produce the correct answer in far less time than a systematic brute force search of all possible character combinations.

Explanation

The Lagged Fibonacci generator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISH_(cipher)

The FISH (FIbonacci SHrinking) stream cipher is a fast software based stream cipher using Lagged Fibonacci generators, plus a concept from the shrinking generator cipher. It was published by Siemens in 1993. FISH is quite fast in software and has a huge key length. However, in the same paper where he proposed Pike, Ross Anderson showed that FISH can be broken with just a few thousand bits of known plaintext.

A pseudo random number generator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator

A linear congruential generator (LCG) is an algorithm that yields a sequence of pseudo-randomized numbers calculated with a discontinuous piecewise linear equation. The method represents one of the oldest and best-known pseudorandom number generator algorithms. The theory behind them is relatively easy to understand, and they are easily implemented and fast, especially on computer hardware which can provide modular arithmetic by storage-bit truncation.