In the wake of renewed skepticism about the effectiveness of cryptography in improving Internet security, the U.S. Department of Commerce on October 2 nominated a new scheme called Rijndael to replace its current, arguably worn out Data Encryption Standard (DES). A product of the Belgian research team of Vincent Rijmen and Joan Daemen, Rijndael beat four other finalists for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Those finalists included one from IBM, one from PKI infrastructure leader RSA Data Security, a third called Serpent from Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen (which placed second in the voting), and what many believed to be the odds-on favorite, the Twofish algorithm from a team of experts led by Counterpane's Bruce Schneier. Having recently published his best-seller Secrets & Lies, Schneier is largely responsible for sparking the new wave of skepticism, calling into question whether encryption is too heavily relied upon as a security measure.
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