Wow, thanks for the in-depth reply (on a post that doesn't look like it's going to get a lot of views).

I'll admit my ignorance of information security (it's something I'm working on), but as a naïve reader I got the impression (considering the supplied ciphertext block) that the article was using paper-tiger/theater encryption that was practically broken in the sense that (given some CPU/GPU time) the tools existed to decrypt it. (Hence my "just for the fun of it".)

Thanks a lot for the links, I'll definitely be checking them out!