Serpent is a 128-bit block cipher designed by Anderson et al. and first published in 1998 [1]. Later that year the cipher was slightly modified [2] and proposed as a candidate for the Advanced Encryption Standard (Rijdnael/AES). In 1999 it was selected as one of the five finalists of the AES competition.
Serpent is a 32-round substitution–permutation (SP) network operating on 128-bit blocks. Each round consists of a key mixing operation, a layer of 32 copies of a \(4 \times4\)-bit S-box, and (except in the last round) a linear transformation. The replicated S-box differs from round to round and is selected from a set of eight different S-boxes. The last (incomplete) round is followed by a final key mixing operation. An additional bit permutation before the first round and after the last key mixing layer is applied to all data entering and leaving the SP network. The 128-bit subkeys mixed with the data in each round are generated by linearly expanding a 128-bit, 192-bit, or 256-bit...
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References
Anderson, R.J., E. Biham, and L.R. Knudsen (1998). “Serpent: A new block cipher proposal.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE'98, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1372, ed. S. Vaudenay. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 222–238.
Anderson, R.J., E. Biham, and L.R. Knudsen (1998). “Serpent: A proposal for the advanced encryption standard.” Proceedings of the First AES Candidate Conference. National Institute of Standards and Technology, August.
Biham, E. (1997). “A fast new DES implementation in software.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE'97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1267, ed. E. Biham. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 260–272.
Biham, E., O. Dunkelman, and N. Keller (2002). “Linear cryptanalysis of reduced round Serpent.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2355, ed. M. Matsui. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 16–27.
Biham, E., O. Dunkelman, and N. Keller (2002). “New results on boomerang and rectangle attacks.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2365, eds. J. Daemen and V. Rijmen. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1–16.
Biham, E., O. Dunkelman, and N. Keller (2003). “Differential-linear cryptanalysis of Serpent.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2887, ed. T. Johansson. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 9–21.
Kelsey, J., T. Kohno, and B. Schneier (2001). “Amplified boomerang attacks against reduced-round MARS and Serpent.” Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1978, ed. B. Schneier. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 75–93.
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De Canni‘ere, C. (2005). Serpent. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_386
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