Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 11
Rijndael
: A Successor
to the Data
Encryption Standard
I don't know if we have any real chance. He can multiply and all we can do is
add. He represents progress and I just drag my feet.
—Sten Nadolny (translated by Breon Mitchell),
God of Impertinence
T
HE AMERICAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
Standards and Technology (NIST) launched
a competition in 1997 under the aegis of an
Advanced Encryption Standard
(AES)
with the goal of creating a new national standard (federal information processing
standard, or FIPS) for encryption with a symmetric algorithm. Although we
have concentrated our attention in this topic on asymmetric cryptography, this
development is important enough that we should give it some attention, if only
cursorily. Through the new standard FIPS 197 [F197], an encryption algorithm
will be established that satisfies all of today's security requirements and that in
all of its design and implementation aspects will be freely available without cost
throughout the world. Finally, it replaces the dated
data encryption standard
(DES), which, however, as
triple DES
remains available for use in government
agencies. However, the AES represents the cryptographic basis of the American
administration for the protection of sensitive data.
The AES competition received a great deal of attention abroad as well as in
the USA, not only because whatever happens in the United States in the area
of cryptography produces great effects worldwide, but because international
participation was specifically encouraged in the development of the new block
encryption procedure.
From an original field of fifteen candidates who entered the contest in 1998,
by 1999 ten had been eliminated, a process with involvement of an international
group of experts. There then remained in competition the algorithms MARS, of
IBM; RC6, of RSA Laboratories; Rijndael, of Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen;
Serpent, of Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudson; and Twofish, of Bruce
Schneier et al. Finally, in October 2000 the winner of the selection process was
announced. The algorithm with the name “Rijndael,” by Joan Daemen and
