Discover Encryption Algorithms, How to break them, and Guides.
Showing 1-9 of 95 articles
ARIA is South Korea's national block cipher, a close cousin of AES that shares its S-box but mixes bytes with a different, self-inverse diffusion layer. Learn how its alternating rounds, key schedule, and 1/π constants work.
Camellia is the cipher that stands next to AES in international standards. Learn how this Japanese Feistel design combines byte S-boxes, a linear mixing layer, and key-dependent FL layers to match AES-level security.
CAST-128, also called CAST5, was the default cipher in some versions of PGP and GnuPG. Learn how its three alternating round functions, huge 8x32-bit S-boxes, and key-dependent rotations work, and why its 64-bit block now limits it.
GOST 28147-89 was the Soviet Union's answer to DES. Learn how its 32-round Feistel design works, why the standard left the S-boxes undefined, and how the modern Magma cipher fixed that.
RC5 and RC6 are built from just three operations: addition, XOR, and rotations whose amounts come from the data itself. Learn how Ron Rivest's flexible RC5 led to RC6, an AES finalist.
Serpent finished second in the AES competition, and it was built to be the safest finalist. Learn how 32 rounds of tiny S-boxes and a bitslice design traded speed for one of the largest security margins of any block cipher.
Simon and Speck are two lightweight block ciphers released by the NSA in 2013 for tiny devices. Learn how Simon gets by on AND, rotate, and XOR, how Speck uses add, rotate, and XOR, and why they became some of the most debated ciphers ever published.
Skipjack was the secret NSA cipher inside the Clipper chip, declassified in 1998. Learn how its 32 rounds of alternating rules work on four 16-bit words, and why its 80-bit key and its history make it a cautionary tale.
SM4 is China's national block cipher standard, a 32-round design that updates one 32-bit word at a time. Learn how its byte S-box, rotate-and-XOR mixing, and compact key schedule work, and where the cipher is used.
