# Tag Info

35

AES is an algorithm which is split into several internal rounds, and each round needs a specific 128-bit subkey (and an extra subkey is needed at the end). In an ideal world, the 11/13/15 subkeys would be generated from a strong, cryptographically secure PRNG, itself seeded with "the" key. However, this world is not ideal, and the subkeys are generated ...

32

There are a variety of reasons why AES is more widely used: AES is a standard. AES has been vetted by cryptanalysts more extensively than Camellia. As a result, we can have greater confidence in the security of AES than in Camellia. Therefore, on the merits, there may be good reasons to choose AES over Camellia. AES is a government standard (FIPS). ...

31

For practical purposes, 128-bit keys are sufficient to ensure security. The larger key sizes exist mostly to satisfy some US military regulations which call for the existence of several distinct "security levels", regardless of whether breaking the lowest level is already far beyond existing technology. The larger key sizes imply some CPU overhead (+20% for ...

22

Assume that 1 evaluation of {DES, AES} takes 10 operations, and we can perform $10^{15}$ operations per second. Trivially, that means we can evaluate $10^{14}$, or about $2^{46.5}$ {DES, AES} encryptions per second. This is a simplistic view: we are ignoring here the cost of testing whether we found the correct key, and the key schedule cost. So on our ...

22

Blum-Blum-Shub is a stream cipher: given a short key, it produces an effectively unlimited-length stream of pseudorandom bits. Other well-known examples of stream ciphers include AES-CTR and RC4. Blum-Blum-Shub gets mentioned a lot by non-expert cryptographers. I suspect this is because it comes with a "proof" of security, which sounds like a wonderful ...

19

As a bonus feature, AES has hardware support in Intel processors which implement the AES instruction set, with AMD support coming soon in their Bulldozer based processors. The AES instructions set consists of six instructions. Four instructions, namely AESENC, AESENCLAST, AESDEC, AESDECLAST, are provided for data encryption and decryption (the ...

18

A known-plaintext attack (i.e. knowing a pair of corresponding plaintext and ciphertext) always allows a brute-force attack on a cipher: Simply try all keys, decrypt the ciphertext and see if it matches the plaintext. This always works for every cipher, and will give you the matching key. (For very short plaintext-ciphertext pairs, you might get multiple ...

17

The actual encryption algorithm is almost the same between all variants of AES. They all take a 128-bit block and apply a sequence of identical "rounds", each of which consists of some linear and non-linear shuffling steps. Between the rounds, a round key is applied (by XOR), also before the first and after the last round. The differences are: The longer ...

16

There is only one main difference between PKCS#5 and PKCS#7 padding is the block size. PKCS#5 padding is only defined for 8-byte block sizes. PKCS#7 padding would work for any block size from 2 to 255 bytes. This is the definition of PKCS#5 padding (6.2): The padding string PS shall consist of 8 - (||M|| mod 8) octets all having value 8 - (||M|| mod ...

15

The most efficient related-key attacks on AES-256 and resulting weaknesses AES-256-based hash functions are summarized in my PhD thesis. Though collision and preimage attacks on hash functions are out of reach yet, the components of these functions still expose some properties that are not expected of good hash functions or random oracles. Getting to the ...

14

Generally speaking, a lookup-table can be implemented in constant time by doing it as if it was a hardware circuit. Consider a multiplexer: this is a circuit which accepts three inputs a, b and c, and yields one output d which is equal to a if c = 0, to b otherwise (I am talking about single-bit values here). A multiplexer can be used to implement a 1→1 ...

14

No. AES-256 is not weaker than AES-128. Absolutely not. And I disagree with the the advice that you should avoid AES-256. The attack against AES-256 is a related-key attack, which is irrelevant to most real-world uses of AES-256. Related-key attacks only become relevant if you use the block cipher improperly, which is not something that you ought to be ...

14

There's no need for an IV when unique keys are used. When each key is used only to encipher a single message, it is safe (from a confidentiality standpoint) to use null IV for all messages. That's customary, for all common modes requiring an IV. It avoids the need to generate an IV, and transmit it, and (in the case of CBC) perform a XOR of the first block ...

14

I'm just curious to know why the 128-bit version become the standard[.] That question is easy to respond. In the section Minimum Acceptability Requirements of Request for Candidate Algorithm Nominations for the AES, it says: The candidate algorithm shall be capable of supporting key-block combinations with sizes of 128-128, 192-128, and 256-128 ...

13

Well, to start off with, IVs have different security properties than keys. With keys (as you are well aware), you need to hide them from anyone in the middle; if someone did learn your keys, then he could read all your traffic. IVs are not like this; instead, we don't mind if someone in the middle learns what the IV is; as long as he doesn't know the key, ...

13

Blowfish has strong points regarding speed because bulk encryption (and decryption) reduce to an alternation of: a 8->32-bit table lookup, and one or two 32-bit operations (addition or XOR). That structure is very well suited to 32-bit CPUs with a short pipeline and a fast cache of at least 4 kByte; and is well suited for a straight C implementation, which ...

13

First, I'll assume we're talking about encrypting/decrypting exactly 128 bits of data, i.e. the block size of AES. Otherwise, you'll need to specify a mode of operation — and if your data's length isn't a multiple of the block size, well, that'll be more difficult to deal with. So, I'll assume we're working with a single block. (If you are using a mode ...

12

According to 7-Zip, Use ZipCrypto, if you want to get archive compatible with most of the ZIP archivers. AES-256 provides stronger encryption, but now AES-256 is supported only by 7-Zip, WinZip and some other ZIP archivers. So really there is some balance to be played with. Do you require better security at the sacrifice of compatibility or more ...

12

I wouldn't assume that the NSA has cracked AES ciphers. I would assume that most crypto systems that use AES have implementation flaws that the NSA exploits when they feel it is worth it. In any case, when the only possible way a state can know something is by breaking a cipher, it's difficult for them to use that information; doing so would reveal that ...

12

If you are using an AES library that has not undergone the FIPS validation process, then you are not FIPS compliant (or, at least, your use of AES is not). FIPS compliant means more than "we use algorithms that FIPS likes", it means "having passed the FIPS certification process"; that is how NIST defines it. Sorry, but NIST is quite strict about this; if ...

12

AES has fewer rounds than Serpent so AES should be faster. The number of rounds by itself is meaningless. Some ciphers have a few complex rounds and others have many simple rounds. See my answer to Why does SHA-1 have 80 rounds? for a related explanation. There is no speed decrease with bigger key size in Serpent while there is in AES. The ...

11

The paper Enabling Standardized Cryptography on Ultra-Constrained 4-bit Microcontrollers (page 255) describes such an implementation.

11

Splitting a key does not reduce the key strength at all. Simply generate two random 128-bit strings and give one to each party. Encrypt the data with the exclusive OR of the two random strings. Each string alone gives no information whatsoever about the final key, assuming your random number generator is sound. No party has any advantage.

11

Having taken The Design of Rijndael from the library just yesterday, I had a look on this problem, too. Fixee wrote in a comment: However, my question is not so much about security implications, but rather "how does omissions of MixColumns make the inverse cipher similar to the cipher?" and "how does this help in implementing the cipher?" The ...

11

A block cipher is an invertible transformation that maps an $n$ bit block of bits to an $n$ bit block of bits, under the control of a key (and where $n=128$ in the case of AES) Now, we most often need to do things other than mapping blocks of $n$ bits; how we do that is using the block cipher within a Mode of Operation. A mode of operation is just a way to ...

11

If you are doing things right, then you will get the level of randomness you are after. Translation: you are not doing things right. You use AES with CFB8 mode, which requires a random initial value. The initial value is a 16-byte string which should be generated randomly and uniformly, and a new IV shall be generated for every single encrypted message. ...

11

Short version: It is quite likely that a large proportion of the keys have fixed points, but I don't have any idea on how to find them. Long version: A stochastic argument There are $2^{128}!$ permuations of 128-bit blocks, and of these, $!2^{128}$ (this is the subfactorial) are fixpoint-free. It is known that $\lim_{N\to\infty}\frac{!N}{N!} = \frac 1e ... 11 Because OCB is patented. And there are other good solutions for authenticated encryption that aren't patented. This makes them more suitable, in most situations. I can recommend, e.g., EAX, GCM, or CWC. EAX and GCM have been used in some standards, and AES-GCM has been standardized. For pointers where you can learn more, read Wikipedia. And try using ... 10 Well, it sounds like you're close. The multiplications implicit within the MixColumns operation are$GF(2^8)$multiplication operations, using the same field representation as they use in the inverse within the sbox. However, because they're multiplying by the fixed constants$\mathtt{1}$,$\mathtt{2}$and$\mathtt{3}\$, it's easier to implement than a ...

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