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Serpent (cipher)

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Serpent's linear mixing stage
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Serpent's linear mixing stage

Serpent is a symmetric key block cipher which was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard contest, where it came second to Rijndael. Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen.

Like other AES submissions, Serpent has a block size of 128 bits and supports a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The cipher is a 32-round substitution-permutation network operating on a block of four 32-bit words. Each round applies one of eight 4-bit to 4-bit S-boxes 32 times in parallel. Serpent was designed so that all operations can be executed in parallel, using 32 1-bit slices. This maximises parallelism, but also allows use of the extensive cryptanalysis work performed on DES.

Serpent was widely viewed as taking a more conservative approach to security than the other AES finalists, opting for a larger security margin: the designers deemed 16 rounds to be sufficient against known types of attack, but specified 32 rounds as insurance against future discoveries in cryptanalysis.

Security

If it is effective, the XSL attack would weaken Serpent. However, the efficacy of the XSL attack is not widely accepted among cryptanalysts.

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Block ciphers [edit]
Algorithms: 3-Way | AES | Akelarre | Anubis | Blowfish | C2 | Camellia | CAST-128 | CAST-256 | CMEA | CS-Cipher | DEAL | DES | DES-X | FEAL | FOX | FROG | G-DES | GOST | Hasty Pudding Cipher | ICE | IDEA | Iraqi | KASUMI | KHAZAD | Khufu and Khafre | Libelle | LOKI89/91 | LOKI97 | Lucifer | MacGuffin | Madryga | MAGENTA | MARS | MISTY1 | MMB | NewDES | Noekeon | RC2 | RC5 | RC6 | REDOC | Red Pike | S-1 | SAFER | SEED | Serpent | SHACAL | SHARK | Skipjack | SMS4 | Square | TEA | Triple DES | Twofish | XTEA
Design: Feistel network | Key schedule | Product cipher | S-box | SPN   Attacks: Brute force | Linear / Differential cryptanalysis | Mod n | Related key | XSL   Standardization: AES process | CRYPTREC | NESSIE   Misc: Avalanche effect | Block size | IV | Key size | Modes of operation | Piling-up lemma | Weak key

 


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