alt Hacker NewsI have no idea who they are or what they were talking about. I think they're thinking about 3DES used as a password hash. I never in 100 years would have guessed that's where they were coming from.
The thread that ensued, a discussion of what it means for a cipher to be obsoleted or unsafe versus "broken", is an actually-interesting question.
I feel pretty OK about how this went.
You could never, in a million years, have guessed by "broken" they meant "it can be decrypted by the public with little effort?" I doubt that. I see no evidence they are talking about a password hash. Here's what they actually cited:
> The DES and Triple DES ciphers, as used in the TLS, SSH, and IPSec protocols and other protocols and products, ...
They're clearly talking about it's use as a cipher. Again, someone who has been here as long as you have should understand that you shouldn't put words in their mouth or be evasive in this way.
The conversation would still have touched on these interesting topics, and would likely have done so more immediately.