The following illustration shows how symmetric key encryption works:. AES, which has a key length of bits, supports the largest bit size and is practically unbreakable by brute force based on current computing power, making it the strongest encryption standard.
The following table shows that possible key combinations exponentially increase with the key size. Key Size. Possible Combinations. Table 1. Key sizes and corresponding possible combinations to crack by brute force attack.
The most popular by far is the open-source project OpenSSL. If you install it and run it with the correct parameters, the key generation process takes five minutes. In my experience, there seems to be countless options out there, but by the time you narrow them down to the latest standards and figure out how you want to balance decryption speed and paranoia, the decision is quickly narrowed down to a handful.
AES has longer keys, and longer keys are more secure. A common way to break a cipher is to look for patterns. The longer the keys, the fewer the patterns, and the less likely a hacker is to gain entry. Once final, this standard will serve as a critical computer security tool supporting the rapid growth of electronic commerce. This is a very significant step toward creating a more secure digital economy. It will allow e-commerce and e-government to flourish safely, creating new opportunities for all Americans.
But the main reason the AES was developed was to replace the aging, outdated, and vulnerable Data Encryption Standard DES , which, by that point, had been the gold-standard symmetric encryption algorithm for the public and private sectors for 20 years.
Basically, the DES was starting to become increasingly vulnerable to brute-force attacks, and the NIST needed a newer and more secure gold standard. In October of , it was announced that Rijndael was the winner of the competition. The NIST chose Rijndael over the other finalists because, according to the NIST, Rijndael had the best combination of security, performance, efficiency, implementability, and flexibility.
Good security was the primary quality required of the winning formula, but factors such as speed and versatility across a variety of computer platforms also were considered. In other words, the algorithms must be able to run securely and efficiently on large computers, desktop computers and even small devices such as smart cards.
Graphic: AES secures information in a way that causes hackers to run for the hills, or at least toward a more vulnerable system. If everyone adopted, purchased devices, or incorporated technology that uses AES encryption, the cyberspace would be a much more resilient place to store data and conduct official business. AES is important because it is a ubiquitous means by which we encrypt information. AES is also important because it standardizes a highly effective data encryption algorithm to ensure that everyone — mainly the military and other federal government entities — are on the same page of data encryption and implementation when it comes to securing classified and controlled unclassified information, the disclosure of which could have disastrous national security consequences.
Think about how we build physical things: standard screw heads and standard screwdrivers, standard measures of screw threads and diameters and length, standard wood measurements, and so on. Imagine building things without standards like the AES. Conceive your own joiners. Design your own tools. Software uses standards similarly.
We call it abstraction. Without abstraction and standards, we would have to reinvent everything every time we build or develop a project. I would guess that the largest project you might accomplish without abstraction would be a s calculator, maybe.
This is why open-source software is so important. Enter AES encryption. It bolsters, if not altogether ensures, your ability to keep people from tampering with your firmware image, or the data on your device, or an email conversation, or web traffic. Basically, anywhere encryption is important, AES is also important. Photo: A Trenton Systems rugged computer with a storage drive exposed. If you're looking for an AES-encrypted, high-performance computing solution for your program or application, Trenton Systems has the right hardware and software solutions that can solve your problem.
We can incorporate solid-state drives, hard disk drives, and self-encrypting drives that use bit AES encryption, bit AES encryption, or bit AES encryption via software or hardware mechanisms. Which key length size you prefer will depend, of course, on your security preferences and program or application requirements. For more information about our AES encryption capabilities and solutions, don't hesitate to reach out.
Who knows? We could be the "key" to success for your next project. Blogs by Trenton Systems. How does AES encryption work? What are some examples of AES encryption? What is bit AES encryption? Is AES encryption symmetric or asymmetric? How secure is AES encryption? Where is AES encryption used? Published as a FIPS standard in AES data encryption is a more mathematically efficient and elegant cryptographic algorithm, but its main strength rests in the option for various key lengths.
AES allows you to choose a bit, bit or bit key, making it exponentially stronger than the bit key of DES. In terms of structure, DES uses the Feistel network which divides the block into two halves before going through the encryption steps. AES on the other hand, uses permutation-substitution, which involves a series of substitution and permutation steps to create the encrypted block.
The original DES designers made a great contribution to data security, but one could say that the aggregate effort of cryptographers for the AES algorithm has been far greater. One of the original requirements from the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST for the DES replacement algorithm was that it had to be efficient both in software and hardware implementations. DES was originally practical only in hardware implementations. Java and C reference implementations were used to do performance analysis of the algorithms.
AES was chosen through an open competition with 15 candidates from as many research teams around the world, and the total amount of resources allocated to that process was tremendous. Check out Assure Security to get started. An introduction to encryption, including best practices for IBM i encryption.
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