Int. J. Communications, Network and System Sciences, 2012, 5, 850-853 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ijcns.2012.512090 Published Online December 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ijcns) Improvement of the Round Key Generation of AES Junshe Wang, Han Xu, Mingqiu Yao Department of Communication and Information System, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, China Email: [email protected] Received August 13, 2012; revised September 27, 2012; accepted November 10, 2012 ABSTRACT The key generation algorithm of AES was introduced, the weaknesses of the key generation design of AES were inves- tigated. According to the key demand put forward a kind of new design idea, and this designing strategy was developed, which can be used to improve the key generation algorithm of AES. An analysis shows that such improvement can en- hance the safety of the original algorithm without reducing its efficiency. Keywords: AES; Data Encryption Standard (DES); Key Generation; Rijndeal 1. Introduction 2. Encryption Algorithm Round Transformation In modern society, computer network has already been covered. In people’s daily lives, the information technol- The AES encryption algorithm’s main body is the encryp- ogy industries have become ubiquitous. In the civil and tion round the transformation round transformation includes military, commercial’s security which is playing an im- mainly ByteSub, ShiftRow, MixColumn and AddRound- portant role is very prominent [1]. Therefore, the impor- Key. tance of information security has been paid more and A. ByteSub transformation more attention. Encryption technology as an important It is each byte in the state which is transformed by field of information security technology, which is widely ByteSub instead of s-boxes transformation. This trans- considered as the most effective means to ensure informa- formation made up of two steps: tion security. Because of advances in computer technol- 1) Multiplicative inverses of each byte in the State. ogy and the needs of reality, the cryptology had the de- 2) The results which is obtained by (2) to (1) do trans- velopment which progresses by leaps and bounds. In the formation y = f (x). field of block ciphers, DES was already unable to satisfy y0 10001111x0 1 requirements of the security, the United States had col- y x 1 110001111 1 lected and selected the Rijndael algorithm as the new y 11100011x2 0 Advanced Encryption Standard (Advanced Encryption 2 y 11110001x3 0 Standard = AES). Compared with 3DES, the security of 3 the AES algorithm is better, AES Algorithm is more sim- y 11111000x 0 4 4 ple and flexible. y5 01111100x5 1 First, algorithm of AES is based on group encryption y 00111110x 1 algorithm. Algorithm including massive shifting algo- 6 6 y 00011111 0 rithm, and the shift operation belongs to the time instruc- 7 x7 tion. It cannot conduct simultaneously with other instruc- B. ShiftRow transformation tions, and reduces the efficiency of the algorithm. Second, ShiftRow transform the line of state which increasing the the rounds of encryption using a loop operation, cyclic offset of circulation moves left, first line unchanged, sec- operation may cause the instruction block, so the instruc- ond line loop left 1 byte, third line loop left 2 bytes, fourth tion. Therefore, the paper made the improvement slightly line loop left 3 bytes. in the AES algorithm foundation, and reduced shift op- C. MixColumn transformation eration and improved the round key, thereby reducing the MixColumn transformation makes confuse transforms encryption and decryption without the premise of im- to columns in the state. In MixColumn transformation, the proving the efficiency of its security. data of state column as 32-bit, and then carries on the Copyright © 2012 SciRes. IJCNS J. S. WANG ET AL. 851 matrix multiplication transformation to it: basis of the direct expansion. The latter round key is ob- tained by the preceding round key, through the first round Sj x c x Sj x (1) of the key as the seed key. Generally speaking, since the cx0.3 x32 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 (2) latter round key can be promoted by preceding round key, preceding round key is obtained by the latter round key, D. AddRoundKey transformation this is the reason which the nature 3 appears [3]. The AddRoundKey transformation let each byte in state and the round sub-key corresponding to the byte 4. Algorithm Improvements XOR, the value of the AddRoundKey transformation are the result of state. The round key transformation in pseu- A. 44 keys are generated by dispatching do C code represented as follows: The AES algorithm’s 128 seed key is produced by us- Round(State,Roundkey[i]){ ing 44 sub-keys. First, the seed key was divided into four ByteSub(State); words: k0 , k1 , k2 , k3 , the remaining sub-keys are ShiftRow(State); produced by usi ng a scheduling algorithm in Figure 1. MixColumn(State); And F is: 32 byte position rotate left one byte. Namely: AddRoundKey(State,Roundkey[i]); RotByte(a,b,c,d) = (b,c,d,a). } B. Cipher The function cipher is the real McCoy, doing the actual 3. Key Analysis of the AES Encryption encryption of the 16 byte long input vector of plaintext Algorithm into the output ciphertext vector ai illustrated in Figure 2. Further input parameters of the vipher, that have been The AES algorithm expands directly the seed key to get created by the initialization function aes_init are the sub- the keys. And each 32 bit word ki and ki1 and ki4 stitution table s-box, the key schedule w, and theological are related, in other words, if it obtained ki4 and ki1 matrix poly_mat. [4] can obtain ki . Similarly, if it knew ki and ki1 may The cipher rearranges the plaintext vector into the state ma- obtain ki4 , knew ki and ki4 may obtain ki1 . Al- trix and iteratively loops the state through add_round _key, though, each round word which produces in a round key sub_bytes, shift_rows, and mix_coulumns. can be carried on by 4 integral multiples the complication, C. The new algorithm’s advantage—Round Keys Ex- the correlation of key generation cannot be changed by change this kind of the complication. Suppose, a round of the Take 10 round AES algorithm as the example, the ini- AES key ki , ki1 , ki2 , ki3 is known now. Then, it tial 4 words seed key expands to 44 word sub-key. may be through ki1 , ki2 obtain ki1 , through ki1 , Among them, Key dependent relationship for: ki de- ki2 obtain ki2 , through ki , ki1 obtain ki3 , pends on ki1 and ki4 i 4,5, , 43 . First, it gener- through ki1 , ki obtain ki4 again, the preceding ates the origin al key. Th en, 40 words sub-keys generated round of the round keys of all sub-keys have been ob- by the seed key and the gradual transformation as Figure tained. It also through k , k obtain k , through i i3 i4 3. k , k obtain k , through k , k obtain k , i1 i4 i5 i2 i5 i6 Taking 2nd round and the 3rd round key as a group, through k , k obtain k , and then get the last i3 i6 i7 Exchange k and k ;Taking 4th round and the 5th round keys. 7 9 round key as a group, Exchange k and k ; Taking The above key generation process is analyzed to get the 15 17 6th round and the 7th round key as a group, E xchange following properties: k and k ; Taking 8th round and the 9th round key as Nature 1: Direct expansion of the key enables itself to 23 25 a group, Exchange k and k ; Taking 10th round and have highly effective; 31 33 the 11th round key as a group, E xchange k and k ; Nature 2: The preceding round key is only replied by 39 41 the generation of the new key, the generation of the new After exchanging 44 words sub-key, It still takes 4 words key can participate encryption and decryption, immedi- as new round of all 11 round. Take 2nd round and 3rd ately [2]. Therefore, the generation algorithm of the key round new sub-key as the example, it analyzes the corre- has timeliness; lations of each round key after the exchange. Before the Nature 3: If one of the round keys is obtained by the exchange, it may derive the 3rd round key through the aggressor then the complete seed key will be obtained by 2nd round key, it may also derive the 2nd round key ac- the aggressor. Namely: The sub-key and the seed key had cording to the 3rd round key [5]. 2nd round of keys be- the relevance. come k4 , k5 , k6 , k9 and 3rd round of keys becomes Security of the key generation algorithm is reduced by k8 , k7 , k10 , k11 after exchange the 8th word and the the nature 3. AES has the high efficiency of the nature 1, 10th w ord . T he n re-use the relationship between them, it the main reason is the seed key which is conducted on the can only through the 2nd round key obtain the 3rd round Copyright © 2012 SciRes. IJCNS 852 J. S. WANG ET AL. k0 k1 k2 k3 F k4 k5 k6 k7 F k8 k9 k10 k11 F F k40 k41 k42 k43 Figure 1. Wheel key generation. S-box w Poly_mat plaintext cipher ciphertext Poly_mat State, S-box round_ key Add_round_key Sub_bytes Shift_rows Mix_columns Figure 2. Encryaption funtion cipher. The 2nd round The 3rd round k4 k5 k6 k7 k4 k5 k6 k9 k8 k9 k10 k11 k8 k7 k10 k11 Figure 3.