Hello everyone. It's been quite a while since I last wrote something here. Today I want to talk about something really interesting in cryptography: why no cryptographic algorithm survives forever, and how cryptography keeps evolving with technology. The Rise and Fall of Old Algorithms DES (Data Encryption Standard) Back in the late '70s, DES was the standard. Everyone used it. Governments approved it. It felt unbreakable. Then in 1998, it was publicly broken. The key size (56-bit) had simply become too small for the computing power of the time. What once took years to brute-force could now be done in hours. RC4 RC4 was fast and simple — perfect for streaming data. It was widely used in protocols like SSL/TLS and WEP (Wi-Fi). By 2001, serious weaknesses started showing up. Over the years, the attacks only got better. Eventually, major browsers and standards bodies deprecated it completely. Another once-popular algorithm sent to the graveyard. Triple DES (3DES) After DES died, we didn't jump straight to AES.…