Network Security and Cryptography

Performance Analysis of AES and 3DES algorithms

The importance of data exchange over the public Internet and other media types are increasing, and so is the value of such exchanged data. Inexorably the importance of data encryption to provide security is greatly stressed. The two main characteristics that identify and differentiate one encryption algorithm from another are its ability to secure the protected data against attacks and its speed and efficiency in doing so. This project is an attempt to present a fair comparison of speed and efficiency between the two most common encryption standards – Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES or TDES).

Implementation:
The analysis is performed for the following two scenarios.

• Local Encryption

Data on a host is encrypted and decrypted locally using the different variants of the two
ciphers and performance will be analyzed.

• Transferring Encrypted data over a LAN

Performance will be evaluated as data in a client machine is encrypted and decrypted using the different variants of the two ciphers and transmitted to a server over a LAN.

Summary:

Advance Encryption Standard (AES) and Triple DES (TDES or 3DES) are commonly used block ciphers approved by NIST. Currently the choice between AES and 3DES depends on the application. The project analyses the performance of the two ciphers under varying conditions with the intention of concluding their aptitudes in different applications.