SPICE-E BACoN (UDTQ#109)- Triple DES
Happy Tuesday, folks! Sorry this is a bit late! I may have been busy testing something important this morning. 
The Recap:
Yesterday’s question asked about a CLI tool that you can use to compare a security template to a PC’s configuration, and unfortunately, a wrong answer won! I think this is only the 3rd or 4th time this has happened! The answer I was looking for was SecEdit.exe, which you can learn more about here, but I wanted to call out that @tim-smith 's logic was pretty much spot on in this post where they mentioned that MSC files aren’t typically used with the command line
And, hey, I did try to warn you that my question
Click to view yesterday's results
The Ramble:
How many of you have green thumbs? And I don’t mean the way that @HulkSmash appears to have a literal green thumb that could smash me to a pulp, but in the “good with plants” sense?
I’ve, unfortunately, been tasked with taking care of all of our indoor plants in my house, which, although I’m generally pretty good at it, it gives me a ton of anxiety (which is probably why I’m “good at it,” I’m just constantly worried about them 
)
In high school, our biology/anatomy teacher (who was an awesome ex-marine with a “No BS” but also “live and let live” kind of guy) was also in charge of setting up a few elective classes. He very clearly was not a fan of this, as all of his non-core classes were basically jokes, and typically turned into just study hall/fun periods. (Sidenote, he was once required to create a “Club” which he called iPod club, as those were still a thing, and it was literally just listening to music with him )
The elective I took with him was supposed to be hydroponics, which was something I was completely unfamiliar with, but I took it knowing that it would likely just become a free period for me… Well, it turned out I ended up being the only person in that class taking care of literally all of the plants for all 28 of us in the class. I took home nearly 100 tomato plants at the end of the year.
I know a lot of us like to disconnect from tech, and that usually involves being in, or bringing in, nature in some way. If you don’t have a green thumb, though, what do you do to “disconnect” when/if you’re getting away from tech?
The Real Question:
Today’s question involves an encryption algorithm that has been deprecated by NIST since 2019, but I just had it come up on some old equipment in my lab. Other than this particular bit of kit, and during my (now expired) Security+ certification, I don’t recall running into it in the wild, so I’m interested to see how this one does.
Which of the following best describes Triple DES (AKA 3DES, or TDES) as an encryption method?
- An earlier revision of RSA without a Diffie-Hellman exchange
- A method for XOR’ing only every 3rd bit to encrypt at high-speed
- Encrypting using 3 (hopefully different) symmetric 56-bit keys
- Encrypting data by converting it to Pig-Latin via the 3 little pigs
- I’m not sure, but I’m excited to learn more!
The Rest:
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As always, if you have suggestions for future questions, improvements, or want to help out with a full question, shoot me a DM or leave a comment below!
And since you’re still reading this, don’t forget to leave me a spice-up just below this! If it’s not orange and filled-in like this → 
it’s not spiced up yet! It lets me know you enjoy these and gives us both points, so why not?
