by the mid-1990s the eff was becoming seriously concerned about the refusal of the us government to license any secure encryption product for export unless it utilized key recovery and claims that governments could not decrypt information when protected by des, continuing even after the public breaking of the code in the first of the des challenges. they coordinated and supported the construction of the "eff des cracker" (nicknamed deep crack), using special purpose hardware and software and costing only $210,000.