>> wouldn't go so far as to say "Easy to crack". Netscape sponsored a contest some months ago to see if anyone could crack a single 40 bit encrypted message. The only guy that was able to do it used 20 high powered desktop machines linked together and had them cranking for over 3 weeks. he cracked that one message, but to crack another, it would take another 3 weeks. I wouldn't call that "easy".
>>
>>128 bit is for all practical purposes, impossible to crack.
>
>Then you see a news story where a highschool student using a Commodore 64 was able develop new cracking algorithm. Onward to 256bit ... :-)

Well, encryption is not exactly like a new "secure" OS or data format. There are no back doors. The only way to decipher a message encrypted in this matter is with a key. If you don't have the key, you have to guess. With 40 bit encryption, there are 1.1 trillion possible keys. The only way to guess this many keys is with pure number crunching power. With 128 bit encryption there are
340,282,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible keys (rounded, of course).

Put a Commodore 64 on that task and our sun will burn out before you guess the right answer.