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A NEW BLOCK CIPHER (NAHRAINFISH)BASED ON SOME AES FINALISTS

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

College of Computers- University of Anbar

Abstract

In this work, we present some deeper insights in the state-of-the-art in block cipher design. This is mainly achieved by assessment of the evaluation process of the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). We conclude (with may be a little bit surprising result) that the required security level, for a block cipher to be used for the present and foreseeable future, may be underestimated during AES evaluation. In accordance, we propose a new block cipher that we call Nahrainfish, which we believe that it offers the required security level without a big sacrifice in efficiency and other related criteria. Instead of building Nahrainfish totally from scratch, we have made a benefit mainly from some AES finalists to develop the new cipher by an over-engineering approach leading to the required higher security level. Nahrainfish is a classical Feistel network based on a novel combination of both key-dependent S-boxes and data-dependent rotations. It operates on 128-bit blocks and accepts a variable key length up to 1024 bits. The paper also includes some important notes on the security and performance of the cipher.

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References
 
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Journal of University of Anbar for Pure Science
Volume 1, Issue 2
August 2007
Page 111-125
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History
  • Receive Date: 15 July 2007
  • Revise Date: 16 August 2007
  • Accept Date: 20 August 2007
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