DES is a widely-used method of data encryption that uses a private key chosen from 72 quadrillion possible keys to encrypt 64-bit blocks of data using 16 rounds of operations. While DES is considered strong encryption, some use triple DES for additional security. In 1997, a cooperative effort of 14,000 computers broke a DES encrypted message by trying 18 quadrillion keys out of the 72 quadrillion possibilities. DES originated at IBM in 1977 and was adopted by the U.S. government but export was restricted due to security concerns, though free software is now widely available. NIST will not recertify DES and is accepting submissions for its AES replacement standard.