New Attacks Breach Computer Codes

The computer security systems that lock up messages in supposedly unreadable code are taking hit after hit. In the past year, a security consultant found a sneaky way to read “secure” public-key messages, and a team of researchers showed how to unravel entire public-key encryption systems. In the latest attack, a cryptographer has cracked tough secret-key systems including the Data Encryption Standard, widely used in credit card verification and...