For Release 11.00 EDT Monday 2nd October 2000 Rijndael is GREEN NIST chooses Rijndael as the Advanced Encryption Standard Announced today in Washington, DC, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has chosen Rijndael as the Advanced Encryption Algorithm for the 21st century. Rijndael -- pronounced Rhine-Dahl -- is the creation of two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. The Cryptix Development Team congratulates Vincent and Joan on their extraordinary achievement and announces the immediate release of the Cryptix JCE and Cryptix 3.2, both enabled with AES as Rijndael. International Cryptoplumbing An international team of open source crypto volunteers from The Cryptix Development Team supported the cryptographers participating in the NIST contest, efforts that were recognised with the award of a Certificate Of Appreciation from the United States Department Of Commerce. Raif S. Naffah, from Australia, led the Cryptix AES Support Project which provided the Java code and tools for most finalists, including Rijndael, for submission to NIST. Paulo Barreto, Brazilian mathematician and programmer, provided coding support for optimising Rijndael implementations; he has been coding and reviewing algorithms for the Belgian team for many years, including the predecessor to Rijndael, the Square cipher. Free Crypto Under the terms of the NIST contest, Rijndael is free and unencumbered for all purposes and all peoples. Cryptix developers have agreed to match this condition, and hereby place their Rijndael code in the public domain. Normally, all Cryptix code is free for all purposes, but requires acknowledgement of The Cryptix Foundation as owners under an extremely liberal "BSD licence." Even this condition is now dropped for the Rijndael code, so that all commercial providers of Java cryptography, including Sun, Baltimore, RSA Labs, and IAIK, may quickly offer their customers the best code. No Arms Race Need Apply Cryptography has long been treated as a munition by the US government. Today's decision marks the end of an era stretching back to the days of Enigma and Magic intercepts. The new algorithm and the accompanying code base is absolutely unimpaired by political or commercial limitations. As a science, cryptography is the special domain of mathematicians; formulas flow across borders as fast as emails. As an idea, the Rijndael cipher can be written out in 10 or so pages of paper, making it impermeable to regulations. Fuel For The Revolution As a tool, code for the new AES algorithm is less than 10,000 bytes, and thus cryptography slips into the average application with less implication on costs than the price of a new PC. As a building block, AES will help to fuel the new industrial revolution in electronic commerce. Ciphers such as Rijndael will keep valuable messages secure in the wild west of the Internet far better than the old methods of obscurity and regulation. Released by The Cryptix Foundation Limited, a Nevis corporation dedicated to the spread of strong crypto. Links: NIST announces the winner of AES as Rijndael: http://www.nist.gov/aes/ The Rijndael page of the Cryptography team, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~rijmen/rijndael/ Cryptix places Rijndael code in public domain: http://www.cryptix.org/aes/ Cryptix products JCE and Cryptix 3 now released with Rijndael as AES: http://www.cryptix.org/news/02102000.html http://www.cryptix.org/products/jce/index.html http://www.cryptix.org/products/cryptix31/index.html http://www.cryptix.org/products/aes/index.html About The Rijndael Team Dr Joan Daemen is currently employed by Proton World International. Dr Vincent Rijmen is a cryptography researcher with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. About Cryptix Java cryptography was first provided under the label of Cryptix in 1996. The Cryptix Development Team now includes crypto- plumbers -- programmers who work with the algorithms and ciphers of cryptographers to produce code and applications -- from 8 countries and publishes the most popular Java cryptography suite. Cryptix products are generally published under the BSD licence, making them free for all purposes when used with due acknowledgement as to source. The Cryptix implementations of Rijndael, written as part of our AES support project, are now placed in the public domain so that all commercial suppliers can proceed to support the AES without having to give any acknowledgement. About National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department Of Commerce, is charged by the US Congress with developing standards for industry. Many of its standards achieve world-wide acceptance, and the predecessor DES has been accepted as the de facto standard for encryption for three decades, albeit with much controversy. About the Advanced Encryption Standard In order to allay concerns of interference, NIST sponsored the open competition for the new algorithm, encouraging entries from around the world. Some 21 submissions were narrowed down to five finalists. NIST encouraged competing cryptographers and the NSA (the world's largest employer of cryptographers and mathematicians) to critique the algorithms, building up a body of review that led to today's choice of the new standard. End. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'