Cryptography in C and C++, Second Edition

Chapter 11. Rijndael: A Successor to the Data Encryption Standard

I don't know if we have any real chance. He can multiply and all we can do is add. He represents progress and I just drag my feet.

——Sten Nadolny (translated by Breon Mitchell), God of Impertinence

The american national institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a competition in 1997 under the aegis of an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with the goal of creating a new national standard (federal information processing standard, or FIPS) for encryption with a symmetric algorithm. Although we have concentrated our attention in this book on asymmetric cryptography, this development is important enough that we should give it some attention, if only cursorily. Through the ...