A cryptographic key of 56 bits or longer will be broken, by exhaustively searching the keyspace, before 1998 UT. Keys longer than 56 bits, but with less than 56 bits of entropy, do not count (crippled keys). The results and method of the cracking must be made public. This claim makes no attempt to guess what has been done in private by governments or other organizations.
"Exhaustive" or "brute force" search defined under Cr28.
On average, the correct key should be found after searching half the possible keys. Known plaintext may be used to check the trial encryptions.
DES, the US national Data Encryption Standard, uses a 56 bit key.
Judgement will be based on information available at http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/97challenge/status.htm and http://www.frii.com/~rcv/desstat.htm
