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stream ciphers encrypt a single character at a time, and are really only used in network encryption.
block ciphers are much more complicated to recover. they take a certian number of letters (a block) and encrypt them at once. then usually they do what is called cipher block chaining, which is basically running the different blocks threw the encryption process so many times depending on what block they are. des is a block cipher.
i hope that answers your question :)
IBMs response to you two naughty boys at Cambridge:
http://www-3.ibm.com/security/crypto...caupdate.shtml
IBM's response was mainly accurate, but did rather rely on the fact that the software was installed correctly, and adequate physical security was in force. They were rather misleading in stating that the implementation of 3DES on an IBM 4758 could not be broken, as all it would need was some minor inside assistance - as was proved in the 'practical results' part of the Cambridge university link.
Just a coincidence that IBM issued a fairly major software patch then :D
heh.
I am wary of *anyone* that says security is 100% you can layer security to get close(er) to 100% but never there.