Serpent encryption algorithm

Serpent is a symmetric key block cipher with block and key sizes size of 128 bits. Serpent is a 32-round substitution-permutation network (SP-network) operating on a block of four 32-bit words. Each round uses 32 copies of the same 4-bit to 4-bit S-box.

This algorithm was one of the five finalists in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) contest, in which it received the second-highest score, losing to Rijndael.

Serpent was designed so that all operations can be executed in parallel, using 32 1-bit slices. The idea behind Serpent was to maximize parallelism, but also to make use of the extensive cryptanalysis work performed on DES.

Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen.

External links

• http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/serpent.html