

With each passing round, the data becomes more and more secure and it becomes harder to break the encryption.īecause these encryption rounds make AES impenetrable! There are just way too many rounds that hackers need to break through to decrypt it. Suffice to say that, multiple rounds of modification generate a new round key every time. We’ll get more into how these round keys are generated later. The initial key is used to create a series of new keys called “round keys.” SPN works by applying multiple rounds of key expansion to encrypt data. Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen made the brilliant decision of using the Substitution Permutation Network (SPN) algorithm. Now hold on to your hats because here’s where it gets interesting. In other words, 128 bits of plaintext yields 128 bits of ciphertext. Regardless of this division, the size of the encrypted data remains the same. Hence, 16 bytes multiplied by 8 bits is yields a total of 128 bits in each block. This means the data is divided into a four-by-four array containing 16 bytes. To be more specific, AES uses a 128-bit block size.

It’s called “block” because this type of cipher divides the information to be encrypted (known as plaintext) into sections called blocks.

Next, AES is also what the tech world calls a “block cipher.” Symmetric keys are better for internal encryption. This is why asymmetric keys are best used for external file transfers. This is because symmetric key algorithms require less computing power. The a dvantage of symmetric systems like AES is they’re much faster than asymmetric ones. On the other hand, asymmetric key systems use a different key for each of the two processes: encryption and decryption. “Symmetric” means it uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypts information Moreover, both the sender and receiver of the data need a copy of it to decrypt the cipher. It’s unparalleled in the amount of security and protection it offers.

Where Is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Used?ĪES is the data encryption standard of today.
