Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
submissions from 12 countries were received. In October
2000 NIST announced that Rijndael, a program created
by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent
Rijmen, had been accepted as the new standard, or the
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The NBS had
expected the DES to be implemented in special-purpose
hardware and hence had given little or no consideration
to its efficient implementation in software, i.e., using
general-purpose microprocessors. As a result, the DES
was unable to take advantage of the rapid development
in microprocessors that occurred in the last two decades
of the 20th century. The AES specifications, on the other
hand, emphasized hardware and software implementa-
tions equally. In part, this recognized the needs of smart
cards and other point-of-sale equipment, which typically
have very limited computational capabilities, but more
important was a recognition of the growing needs of the
Internet and e-commerce. Based on their experience
with the DES, where improvements in computing simply
overran the work factor of the fixed 56-bit key, NIST spec-
ifications for the AES also called for the algorithm to be
capable of increasing the key length if necessary. Rijndael
proved itself to be both small enough to be implemented
on smart cards (at less than 10,000 bytes of code) and flex-
ible enough to allow longer key lengths.
Based on the DES experience, there is every reason
to believe the AES will not succumb to cryptanalysis, nor
will it be overrun by developments in computing, as was
the DES, since its work factor can easily be adjusted to
outpace them.
