Alternatives to the DES

Question

What are the other alternatives to the DES? Briefly explain it.

Answer 1

All through the years, several new block cipher algorithms have been designed as the alternatives to DES. One is FEAL that is, a cipher for which many attacks have been discovered. The IDEA is a cipher designed by Massey and Lai which seems much more promising and two more latest designs are RC5 and SAFER. Furthermore, the U.S. government announced in the year 1993 an algorithm termed as Skipjack as a part of its Capstone project. The Skipjack functions on 64-bit blocks of data, as does DES, however use 80-bit keys, as contrasting to 56-bit keys in the DES. Though, the details of Skipjack are categorized, thus Skipjack is only obtainable in hardware from the government-authorized manufacturers.