Is the EFF DES Cracker practical or a laboratory curiosity?
The EFF DES Cracker has already run test problems, crafted by Bruce Schneier, which enabled it to find the key for DES-encoded Microsoft Excel, Eudora, and MS-Word files, without knowing anything about the files except what program had created them. It can be used directly to recover lost DES keys from stored files or encrypted communications sessions. We also expect to allow United States cryptographers to use the machine over the Internet in their research. The arbitrary way that the U.S. Commerce Department administers U.S. export controls may prevent us from granting non-US researchers access to the machine, though they are free to build their own from the design information we have printed in the Cracking DES book.
