This is of course not the case, when a password database is lost and when an obsolete encryption algorithm like DES is used, users can not share blame.

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Well, that really does not make much of a difference when you expose the entire database table and have way too much faith in the 34 year old encryption algorithm reported to be used to safeguard the data.

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There's the actual encryption algorithm, which is a pretty complicated thing, and then there's a key or a password.

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Hitachi's version "scrambles data using a password-generated key" as the data is written, and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved using the highly-touted Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.

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To encrypt its data, the pen uses an algorithm called Rijndael, which the National Institute for Standards and Technology is planning to use as the Advanced Encryption Standard, which will replace the existing Data Encryption Standard (DES), which is currently being phased out of use.

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