History
CSA was largely kept secret until 2002. The patent papers gave some hints, but important details, like the layout of the so-called S-boxes, remained secret. Without these free implementations of the algorithm were out of question. Initially, CSA was to remain implemented in hardware only, and this would have made it difficult to reverse engineer existing implementations.
In 2002 FreeDec was released, implementing CSA in software. Though released as binary only, disassembly revealed the missing details and allowed reimplementation of the algorithm in higher-level programming languages.
With CSA now publicly known in its entirety, cryptanalysts started looking for weaknesses.
Read more about this topic: Common Scrambling Algorithm
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)