When using DES, how large would the key space be if we only use letters as characters? Would it be safe? Or is it susceptible to brute force attacks or something else?
A DES key is 56 bits. If we assume letters are ASCII encoded and take 8 bits each this means a DES key of only letters would be 7 letters long. Given that there are 26 letters in the roman alphabet we would have $26^7 \approx 2^{33}$ possible keys, or if we allow uppercase and lowercase, $52^7 \approx 2^{40}$ possible keys. Both keyspaces can quickly be enumerated with modern hardware and can easily be brute forced.