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                Date: 1999-09-29
                 
                 
                Krypto: DES-Nachfolger nominiert
                
                 
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      Der Nachfolger des antiken DES- 
Verschlüsselungs/standards [Sollbruchzeit schon gegen 24  
Stunden, eingesetzt in EU etwa bei Bankomaten]  wird  
entweder MARS [IBM], RC6 [RSA], Twofish [Counterpane's  
Bruce Schneier] Rijndae [NL] oder Serpent [UK,NO,IS]   
heissen.  
Die US-Behörde NIST [National Institute for Standardization]  
wird die Auswahl treffen, bezahlt wird an die Erfinder nichts. 
 
post/scrypt: Wetten, dass eine der drei US-Einreichungen -  
und zwar nicht jene von Bruce Schneier - gewinnen wird,  
werden nicht angenommen. 
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Today's Focus: Advanced Encryption Standard - crypto for  
the next century 
 Jim Reavis 
 
A big decision will be made sometime next year that will  
affect electronic commerce and the Internet well into the next  
century.  It is the selection of the Advanced Encryption  
Standard, a successor to the venerable Data Encryption  
Standard encryption algorithm, which was developed by IBM  
in the 1970s.  Although having served its purpose for 20  
years, DES has begun to show its age, it was broken in less  
than 24 hours in a cracking contest earlier this year.  It is  
hoped that the new algorithm will last that long or longer. 
 
The AES is to be selected next year by the National Institute  
of Standards and Technology. From an initial list of 21  
candidates, the five finalists have been selected: MARS,  
RC6, Rijndael, Serpent and Twofish.  Three are from the  
U.S., one is from Belgium and one has team members from  
several countries.  These developers are primarily competing  
for the glory of being selected - NIST is requiring that the  
selected entry agrees to forgo any royalties from the  
algorithm. 
 
What is the significance of the new algorithm? When  
selected, the AES algorithm will be used by the U.S.  
government for encrypting all sensitive, nonclassified  
information as soon as possible. Because the federal  
government has basically migrated from being a developer of  
computer technologies to a massive consumer, AES will be  
integrated into commercial products being sold to the public  
and private sector alike.  This will likely give AES the critical  
mass it needs to be the encryption technology integrated into  
computers large and small to secure e-commerce and  
financial transactions, as well as protecting the privacy of  
individual communications. 
 
Although the strength of the algorithm, and its resistance to  
attack, is the primary selection criteria, speed and portability  
are also critical.  NIST has specified that the algorithm be  
successfully implemented on an Intel Pentium processor.   
While it may seem odd that the algorithm of the future needs  
to run on the hardware of the past, the vision is that this  
encryption needs to work on nontraditional devices, such as  
smart cards, where the resources are still predicted to be  
modest for a while.  In addition to extensive white papers  
about their algorithms, submitters were required to submit  
ANSI C and Java implementations of their algorithm for  
testing. 
 
NIST wisely realizes the benefit of building trust in the  
selection process by making it as open as possible.  NIST is  
encouraging comment from the public and the competitors to  
assist in the decision-making process.  The submissions are  
publicly available on NIST's Web site, and the competitors  
have been busy trying to crack each other's code.  One  
submitter likened the process to a demolition derby, although  
at this stage the finalists are all fairly strong and the final  
selection may look more like a beauty contest.  What groups  
are behind these algorithms? 
 
MARS: IBM developed MARS, which stands for  
multiplication, addition, rotation and substitution - an overview  
of how the algorithm works. 
 
RC6: RSA Laboratories submitted RC6. The principal inventor  
is Ronald Rivest, a professor at MIT and the R in RSA. 
 
Rijndae: Two researchers from Belgium developed: Joan  
Daeman and Vincent Rijmen. 
 
Serpent: Researches from Britain, Norway and Israel  
developed Serpent. 
 
Twofish: Counterpane Systems of Minneapolis submitted  
Twofish, which was invented by Bruce Schneier, author of  
Applied Cryptography. 
 
The candidates are all preparing for the third AES conference  
next April, where a technical analysis of the finalists will be  
presented and opinions of the strongest candidates will be  
offered.  The final selection will occur shortly afterwards.  A  
final standard will be published in the summer of 2001, with  
commercial products becoming available in the years  
following.  There have been some suggestions that NIST will  
select one of the non-U.S. entries to encourage international  
adoption of the standard.  I feel that the open process used  
for the algorithm selection is helping to mitigate that as an  
issue, and it isn't likely to be highly weighted by NIST. 
 
An interesting development during the research of code  
cracking is the finding that these codes could potentially be  
broken by a new method: power consumption.  By a very  
sophisticated process of monitoring the power consumption  
of smart cards, researchers are able to break codes.  This  
could possibly be remedied by developing hardware that can  
change the power consumption signature - more research is  
definitely needed here.  Although many believe the new  
standard will last for 20 to 30 years, I personally shy away  
from any technology predictions in excess of five years.  We  
will certainly see more attempts to find indirect attacks at  
code breaking such as the power consumption method, and  
there will need to be continuing work to develop additional  
armor for the core algorithm. 
 
This process of the government working on the development  
of a standard-encryption algorithm in an atmosphere of  
openness, and showing a true spirit of cooperation with the  
private sector, is an example of government at its best.  It  
would be nice to see the government take the same  
approach with encryption technology that is already available. 
 
Source 
Network World Fusion:  
http://www.nwfusion.com/focusaccess.html  
 
 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Development Effort:  
http://www.nist.gov/aes  
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BIG BROTHER AWARDS AUSTRIA 1999 
Fuer Lauschangreifer, Spitzelfirmen, Datenhaendler,  
gestzlich ermaechtigte Ueberwacher 
Reichen Sie Ihre Nominierung ein: 
http://www.bigbrother.awards.at
                   
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edited by Harkank 
published on: 1999-09-29 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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