NIST has driven standards for cryptography for decades and is now looking to the future with the publication of a draft entitled “Transitioning the Use of Cryptographic Algorithms and Key Lengths” [here]:
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It is a really informative read and it outlines that SHA-1 is being retired in the near future and adds in the newly defined standards for PQC (ML-KEM and ML-DSA). Overall, they define that methods are either:
Acceptable.
Deprecated — they will be dropped in the near future).
Disallowed — they should not be used), or
Legacy (they should only be used in legacy applications).
Moving away from 112-bit security
The DES encryption method used a 56-bit equivalent key size. This was upgraded to 3DES (aka TDEA —…
Professor of Cryptography. Serial innovator. Believer in fairness, justice & freedom. Based in Edinburgh. Old World Breaker. New World Creator. Building trust.
