DES is considered laughable these days. You could probably find many programs that could brute force DES on a common PC in a respectable time.

You are right. I forgot to mention that the triple DES version should be used, which basically consists of three repetitions of DES with three different keys. It is significantly more secure than DES. Incidentally, the link I suggested has an implementation of both.
Of course, the choice of this or any other algorithm (like the ones BazB suggests) should be done according to a number of technical considerations (security constraints, algorithm efficiency, existence of ready-made implementations, etc.).

Best regards

Antonio Bellezza