DES Algorithm Teacher

DES Algorithm Teacher is a user-friendly and efficient piece of software which aims to help you understand and work with the DES encryption algorithm, resorting to short comments and animations to assist you in the learning it.

After downloading the file, you can simply double-click to launch it, as it does not require installation in order to function. This means you can easily carry it with you anywhere you go an a removable memory device, running it on all compatible systems.

The straight-forward interface of DES Algorithm Teacher presents you with several buttons, enabling you to choose the step you wish to further look into. At the same time, it offers a ‘Full Example’ that you can watch, as it can help you make more sense of this type of process.

To get started, you can just click on the ‘General Algorithm’ button, which will display the basic steps of the process, such as ‘Initial Permutation’, ‘Left’, ‘Right’, ‘Round 1’, ‘Key’, ‘Inverse Initial’ and others.

Moreover, you can click on each section for further details, each one opening in a new window. For instance, the ‘Initial Permutation’ screen lets you ‘Start’ the example, and DES Algorithm Teacher will show you gradually how each character in a written message is associated to a certain number.

In the case of more complex steps, such as the ‘Round 1’, the utility will break down each move (’Expansion / Permutation’, ‘Substitution / Choice’, ‘XOR’, ‘Left Shift’, etc) into simple actions exemplified through basic animations.

To sum it up, DES Algorithm Teacher is a handy and easy to understand application that you can use to learn the steps of the DES encryption algorithm from scratch, proving quite effective even if you have no prior knowledge or experience with it.