Short for
Advanced Encryption Standard, a
symmetric 128-
bit block data
encryption technique developed by Belgian cryptographers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. The U.S government adopted the
algorithm as its encryption technique in October 2000, replacing the
DES encryption it used. AES works at multiple network layers simultaneously. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce selected the algorithm, called
Rijndael (pronounced
Rhine Dahl or
Rain Doll), out of a group of five algorithms under consideration, including one called MARS from a large research team at IBM.
While the terms AES and Rijndael are used interchangeably, there are some differences between the two. AES has a fixed block size of 128-bits and a key size of 128, 192, or 256-bits, whereas Rijndael can be specified with any key and block sizes in a multiple of 32-bits, with a minimum of 128-bits and a maximum of 256-bits.
