[sillysaurusx]

The researchers added a footnote explicitly refuting the claim that 32 bit keys were secure 25 years ago, too.

> The Midnight Blue researchers have since demonstrated real-life exploitations of some of the vulnerabilities, for example at the 2023 Blackhat Conference in Las Vegas (USA). They have shown that TETRA communications secured with the TEA1 encryption algorithm can be broken in one minute on a regular commercial laptop and in 12 hours on a classic laptop from 1998 [III].

[marcus0x62]

In the mid-late 90s, 40-bit encryption was common due to US export control restrictions, and even then, that was thought to be insecure against a nation state attacker.

In 1998, the EFF built a custom DES Cracker[0] for around $250k that could crack a 56-bit DES message in around 1 week. As was the custom at the time, they published the source code, schematics, and VHDL source in a printed book to evade (and, I guess, mock) export restrictions.

0 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker

[clankyclanker]

(If that's the case I'm thinking of) it was actually documented as a challenge to export restrictions, mocking them was merely a pleasant byproduct.

The EFF's legal challenge was essentially that if crypto is a munition, then this printed book explaining the crypto is also at least as much of a munition, if not more so. They gave the judge the choice between deciding that a printed book is some sort of deadly tool, or deciding that crypto wasn't conceptually a munition. Strangely, the judge ruled in the EFF's favor.

[marcus0x62]

That was Phil Zimmerman’s book containing the PGP source whixh was published a few years before the Deep Crack book. https://philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/BookPreface.html