Crypt Overview

Typical values

• RC5-32/16 (256-bit key, 32 r.., 16 cycles)
• DES (56-bit-key, 16 rounds., 8 cycles)
• Triple-DES (112-bit key., 48 r.., 24 cycles)
• IDEA (128-bit-key, 8 rounds, 8 cycles)

Percent worse as Twofish

• 37%
• 137%
• 541%
• 309%

Memory demand

10 kB data, 270 kB code size

Technology

Feistel network with 16 rounds (bijective function made up of 4 key dependent 8x8 bit S-boxes, as well as additional matrices and encryption functions)

Mathematical security / effort needed for cracking with a 256 bit key length

approx. 10¹⁰ years

Best successful crypto attack

5 (of 16) rounds of a Feistel network with 2^22,5 (= 6 million) known input plain texts with an expense of 2⁵¹ (= 2,3 * 10¹⁵). Computational effort rises exponentially with each additional Feistel network

Supported key lengths

all lengths <= 256 bits, in particular: 128 bit, 192 bit, 256 bit

Key exchange

with RSA method for public key-cryptography (up to 4096 bits key length)

Type of the method

block cyphering with secure key exchange

Minimal data length

16 bytes (smaller data lengths can be brought to that minimal length by adding random data)

Operating systems

Common combinations

1. with steganography program like SubiText (after encryption)
2. with any kind of data compression program (before and sometimes after encryption)

• developed in the USA by a research team around crypto guru Bruce Schneier
• can be integrated in any kind of network environment or as a component in applications
• newest, most secure and unpatented technology
• additional RSA component with key management (to secure the key exchange for Twofish)
• encoding speed, time for key-specific calculations, code size, RAM consumption (main memory), ROM consumption (for example on a smart card) or amount of gates on a chip can be varied or rather traded off against each other. Increasing one of these values goes along with a worsening of one or more of the other values.
• method can be implemented on a Smartcard with less than 64 bytes of RAM and even less than 1400 Bytes of ROM; as a hardware solution less than 14000 gates will be needed

Available programming components

Price

• Software development kit (SDK) with English / German documentation (unlimited number of copies allowed)
• Above SDK with RSA component and key management (in north America a license is needed, otherwise freely useable)
• Services of integration in software or of integration in networks

• $100,-
  
• $300,-
  
  
• $75,- per hour

Abbreviation

Meaning

AES

Advanced Encryption Standard; adoption in the year 2001 by NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology): Rijndael

DES

Data Encryption Standard; block cypher; from the seventies

kB

kilobyte; 2¹⁰ Bytes = 1024 Bytes = 2¹³ Bits

MB

Megabyte; 2²⁰ Bytes = 2²³ Bits

RSA

The public key encryption method named after their developers Rivest, Shamir and Adleman

SDK

Software development kit