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Science 6 October 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5489, p. 25
DOI:

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ScienceScope

The algorithm is dead; long live the algorithm. After a 3-year competition, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) this week revealed the cryptographic standard that will replace the aging Digital Encryption Standard (DES), the mathematical recipe used to safeguard everything from digital records to communications.

The new standard will be based upon an elegant algorithm, called Rijndael, designed by Belgians Vincent Rijmen of the Catholic University of Louvain and Joan Daemen of smartcard company Proton World International. Rijndael got the nod because it is fast and compact, and it sets up cryptographic keys quickly, said NIST director Ray Kammer. And it's so secure that even the government spies at the National Security Agency plan to use it.

Coincidentally, Rijndael also was the only algorithm among the five finalists not to face a potential patent-infringement lawsuit from Hitachi, which earlier this year made broad claims to an array of mathematical techniques used by ciphers (Science, 19 May, p. 1161).

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)