News: AES for everyone

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*Golfclap*

 

[eigen]

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
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*Golfclap*

Crypto Algorithms are easy ( not really ) the hard part is implementing them. But I am sure all the brilliant EE's and programmers will do just fine. :frown:

 

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Originally posted by: eigen

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
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*Golfclap*

Crypto Algorithms are easy ( not really ) the hard part is implementing them. But I am sure all the brilliant EE's and programmers will do just fine. :frown:

Wasn't that the problem with WEP ?

 

[Boscoh]

No, the problem with WEP was in the design of the algorithm because it generated weak IV's, and weak IV's which could be identified via the first few unencrypted bits, which reduced the keys that needed to be searched by an attack to something like 2^16.

AES is a whole different animal. You've got have a processor capable of handling all the math, which a lot of AP's dont have. If they do, you've got take into account the performance hit because it's like there is only one processor doing everything. On multi-processor (or ASIC) systems, you've got figure out if you want one processor to handle all the AES stuff only, or if you want it to do multiple things. Do you design new AP's to include a specialized ASIC to do encryption/decryption? This isn't really a huge deal in small home-market AP's where AES is already largely implemented, but it can be in enterprise-class AP's where the AP's can have a heavy CPU utilization and pass tons of traffic. Implementation of AES is going to be a much more difficult problem than getting the standard passed, but probably not too difficult. In a high-security environment I might actually just do IPSec over the wireless and use 3DES...I'd like to see AES be exposed for a few more years before trusting it completely. Remember, 3DES has been around a LONG, LONG time.

 

[cmetz]

As far as I can tell, 802.11i == WPA AES. Its ratification is a good thing. WEP just wasn't good enough, and WPA implementations are still not fully baked. The full 802.11i will increase the pressure on vendors to deliver WPA AES in a form that really works.

I believe that Broadcom and Intersil 802.11g silicon has AES acceleration in the hardware, don't know about Atheros or the other players. It's been known for quite a while that this was coming, so any vendor who didn't put the AES acceleration into their chipset for the current new-generation stuff was foolish and their customers are going to be very unhappy with them.