Re: RE: Rijndael

[Ben Laurie <ben () algroup co uk>]

Timmah wrote:

> > > > Yes, it was, Belgian or Indian, I think.  I didn't mention it becuse I
> > > > couldn't remember how to spell it ;)
> > > >
> > > > But since it's now the US's AES standard, who knows how strong it is...
> > >
> > > The designers are Belgian (Flemish).  Not to denigrate them or their work,
> > > I believe that it was not the strongest of the five AES finalists, and
> > > this was demonstrated during the last few months before selection.  You
> > > can interpret that however you want.
> >
> > There were other factors in the selection process, not just cryptographic
> > strength. And some weaknesses have been fixed later.
>
>
> I maintain that the AES selection committee didn't weight factors sanely.
> Overall security of algorithms in different modes of operation should have
> been a deal-breaking factor and it was instead sacrificed for speed and
> other considerations.  That is just a fact.

IIRC, a key criterion was key scheduling speed. Forgive me for being
suspicious, but that sounds to me like "we'd like brute force to be
efficient, please".

Cheers,

Ben.

-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/

"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
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