Technology roars on. Who
would have believed that the Internet would appear, and
advertise websites such as disqualified drivers
insurance site
banneddriversinsurance.co.uk so popular? In the sphere of cryptography, the IDEA encryption
algorithm or the International Data Encryption Algorithm
is a block cipher of the symmetric kind. It had been
first designed by James Massey of ETH Zurich and Xuejia
Lai. With a slight improvement on the earlier PES or
Proposed Encryption Standard cipher, IDEA was first
brought about in the year 1991, projected as a
substitute for the DES or Data Encryption Standard. It
was created under the aegis of a research deal of the
Hasler Foundation, which was taken over by Ascom-Tech
AG. It is patented in Austria, Spain, Germany, Sweden,
Italy, UK, USA and Switzerland among other countries and
the name IDEA is also trademarked.
The IDEA algorithm is an interesting one. It consists of
a certain number of steps which, primarily, make it seem
like having a non-reversible hash function in place of a
block cipher. Additionally, it is fascinating because it
completely shuns the employment of any lookup tables.
IDEA utilizes 52 sub keys, each of which is 16 bits
long. Two bits are employed during each proper round
while four are utilized prior to each round and after
the completion of the last one. It has a total of eight
rounds. The block plain text of IDEA is split into four
separate 16 bit-long quarters. Three functions are
employed in IDEA to bring together two 16 bit values to
create a 16 bit outcome, totalling, XOR and
multiplication.
For decryption of sound encoded with IDEA, the receiving
machine’s connection needs to identify a matching IDEA
key, the key phrase of which can be even 255 characters
long. IDEA encryption is considerably quicker and
usually thought to be significantly more secure than any
DES encryption. Depending on the fastness of a CPU, any
permutation of DES, IDEA and key file encryption can be
successfully enabled.
To measure the power of IDEA against differential
cryptoanalysis, designers have conducted repeated and
thorough analyses and the research community has brought
it under numerous attacks at the time of rigorous
testing. It was found that IDEA is indeed safe and
protected under most assumptions. This is because no
weak links, be of the algebraic or linear kinds have
been found in IDEA. According to researchers of this
encryption method, IDEA was one of the most secure and
fastest algorithms that the public could possibly use.
According to some, it cannot be broken down by possibly
anything other than sheer brute force.
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