Symmetric block ciphers speed analysis

Abstract

Confidentiality is one of the underlying data protection requirements. In modern cryptography, this is generally provided for by symmetric block ciphers. The most frequently used such cipher is AES. The cipher’s modularity achieved with the help of the encryption modes, fast software and hardware implementation, and good support from many equipment manufacturers and software developers have allowed AES to be present wherever
encryption is needed. In the paper, the performance of the AES algorithm is compared to Camellia, DES, 3DES, Serpent and Twofish. The hardware implementation of the AES is also included in the comparison. We are interested to see how much hardware implementation increases the algorithm’s performance. Results show that AES is the fastest algorithm of those compared. Furthermore, the hardware-implemented version is more than an order of magnitude faster.