INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
AES is the Advanced Encryption Standard, a standard for cryptography that is used to encrypt data to keep it private
which means that blocks of text of a certain size (128 bits) are encrypted, as opposed to a stream cipher where each character is encrypted
The symmetric part refers to that the identical key is used for the encryption process, as well as to decrypt the message.The quest for
It was adopted for US Government use in 1977, but was subsequently demonstrated to be vulnerable to a variety of attacks, including brute
force, differential cryptanalysis and linear cryptanalysis, due to the weakness that DES is based on a 56-bit algorithm- considered no
which applied the DES algorithm to the message three consecutive times, with three different encryption keys, to better encrypt the message
The 3DES modification of DES made the message more secure from brute force attacks of contemporary computers.Fifteen different cryptographic
algorithms were proposed to replace DES, in what began a five year process by the US Government
This was done to facilitate public comment to aid in development through transparency, while it was still in the design stage
It was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with a goal of ease of use for both the hardware and software
Through this process, some refinements to the original Rijndael were done, including changes to the key and block length to further enhance
the field was narrowed to five algorithms, (Rijndael, Serpent, RC6, Twofish and MARS)
These then received further analysis, including the strength of the security, ease of implementation, a royalty-free algorithm, and the
speed and accuracy for both encryption and decryption
After the analysis ended, the Rijndael cipher emerged as the winner, and it was subsequently rolled out for use in the US Government in
Information Processing Standard (FIPS)
Subsequently it was adopted by the private sector as well, and AES is the most popular cipher for symmetric key cryptography.How AES
worksAES is based on a block cipher, with each having a size of 128 bits
The keys are symmetric, with three different sizes available: 128, 192 or 256 bits, with the latter two used for US government documents
sizes, and key lengths, but these were dropped in favor of standardization on the 128-bit block size, and key lengths of 128, 192 and 256
AES remains the the only publicly available cipher that is approved by the NSA to protect government information at these highest levels of
security clearance.AES uses a substitution permutation network (SPN) block cipher algorithm
The open message gets transformed to a secure message through several steps
It starts with each block of plain text as a standard size
The message is inserted into an array, and then a cipher transformation is done to encrypt the message
AES there are multiple rounds of encryption as well
However, with AES, this is done significantly more than in 3DES, which depends on the key length, with 10 rounds applied for a 128-bit key,
process, an encryption key gets created, which is required to decrypt the message by the intended recipient; without the encryption key, the
message is quite scrambled and unintelligible
Therefore, both the sender, and the recipient must know the same key to be able to encrypt or decrypt the message.AES for everybodyThese
days, via the web, AES cryptography can be easily accessed by any user, true to its open source roots
For example, via the website AES Encryption, the message is placed in the text box, a key is entered in the lower box, and the key length is
selected; all three lengths are supported: 128, 192 and 256-bit
The button to encrypt or decrypt is selected, and the AES cipher is applied
While this makes AES accessible to public users, the lack of security via a web interface is hardly appropriate for government use.AES and
the internetWhile AES was originally developed for US Government applications of classified data, it also gets used to keep file transfers
private across the internet
For example, AES gets used when transferring files via an HTTPS connection, the more secure variant of an HTTP connection, which is designed
to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack.Closer to home, AES is also used to encrypt the Wi-Fi on your router, when combined with the popular
WPA2 protocol, that gets termed AES/WPA2
The alternate security protocol with WPA2 is TKIP, which is older than AES, and not considered as secure (although is sometimes used for
backwards compatibility to older devices)
did that, and so much more as much communication on the modern internet depends on AES, even if many users have not even heard of it
