What is AES? What's special? How is this coding standard applied?

In the era of Internet development today, the communication between users on  computers  or  phones  needs to be more secure. Therefore, AES was born to help with this problem. So, what exactly is AES, the principle of operation, and what is the application of AES in practice? See the answer in the article below!

1. What is AES?

AES, an acronym for Advanced Encryption Standard (roughly translated as  encryption standard level ), is the standard data encryption of type algorithms ' coding blocks ' (block cipher) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the US National introduced in 2001.

The goal of AES was born to  protect data through data encryption and decryption , and up to now, AES is used extremely popularly.

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2. Principle of operation of AES

The Swap Alternate Network Block Cipher (SPN) algorithm is adopted in the AES encryption standard, with each block size of 128, 192 and 256 bits. The process starts with a  standard size plain text block  inserted into the row, and finally encoding. These three indispensable steps are  replace , transform ,   and  blend .

And in order to access the original data, the user must know both the encryption key and the decryption key, otherwise the received data will be confusing.

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3. Application of AES

- AES for everyone

Ordinary users can use AES to encrypt data according to the AES algorithm. For example, you can access the AES Encryption page  , then enter the data and apply the key. However, with this method, it lacks security, and is only used for common tasks.

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- Encrypt information in software

With programming languages ​​like C / C ++, Java or Assembler, you can write AES algorithm into the software to encrypt data, and they support a lot of operating systems like  Linux  or Windows.

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- Apply to hardware devices

Two lines of devices applying AES algorithm include the first device line based on the operation of the microprocessor system and the second device line, usually in the form of USB plug-in  , or in the form of smart cards ( smart card).

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- Communication of information through the Internet

Through the HTTPS connection, the data is encrypted and decrypted through the AES algorithm, thus making the information more secure when compared to HTTP. In addition, today's WiFi is also using the AES algorithm, and when combined with the WPA2 protocol, this communication becomes more secure.

Jessica Tanner

Update 28 February 2021