WPA made many advances in wireless security. As an encryption method, it included the Data Encryption Standard (DES), (a method for encrypting information) selected as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) for the United States in 1976, and which has subsequently enjoyed widespread use internationally. DES is now considered to be insecure for many applications. DES keys have been broken in less than 24 hours. The algorithm is believed to be practically secure in the form of Triple DES, although there are theoretical attacks. In recent years, the method has been superseded by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known as Rijndael, is adopted as an encryption standard by the US government. AES was announced by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as US FIPS PUB 197 November 26 2001 after a 5-year standardization process. It became effective as a standard in 2002. IEE802.11i is also known as WPA2. It was ratified in June 2004, and is an amendment to WPA which mandates the use of AES encryption. It is backwards compatible with WPA, but WPA2 provides the highest, most up-to-date security for wireless networking.