SAFER

In cryptography, SAFER (Secure And Fast Encryption Routine) is the name of a family of block ciphers designed primarily by James Massey (one of the designers of IDEA) on behalf of Cylink Corporation. The early SAFER K and SAFER SK designs share the same encryption function, but differ in the number of rounds and the key schedule. More recent versions — SAFER+ and SAFER++ — were submitted as candidates to the AES process and the NESSIE project respectively. All of the algorithms in the SAFER family are unpatented and available for unrestricted use.

The first SAFER cipher was SAFER K-64, published by Massey in 1993, with a 64-bit block size. The "K-64" denotes a key size of 64 bits. There was some demand for a version with a larger 128-bit key, and the following year Massey published such a variant incorporating new key schedule designed by the Singapore Ministry for Home affairs: SAFER K-128. However, both Lars Knudsen and Sean Murphy found minor weaknesses in this version, prompting a redesign of the key schedule to one suggested by Knudsen; these variants were named SAFER SK-64 and SAFER SK-128 respectively — the "SK" standing for "Strengthened Key schedule", though the RSA FAQ reports that, "one joke has it that SK really stands for 'Stop Knudsen', a wise precaution in the design of any block cipher". Another variant with a reduced key size was published, SAFER SK-40, to comply with 40-bit export restrictions.

All of these ciphers use the same round function consisting of four stages, as shown in the diagram: a key-mixing stage, a substitution layer, another key-mixing stage, and finally a diffusion layer. In the first key-mixing stage, the plaintext block is divided into eight 8-bit segments, and subkeys are added using either addition modulo 256 (denoted by a "+" in a square) or XOR (denoted by a "+" in a circle). The substitution layer consists of two S-boxes, each the inverse of each other, derived from discrete exponentiation (45^x) and logarithm (log₄₅x) functions. After a second key-mixing stage there is the diffusion layer: a novel cryptographic component termed a pseudo-Hadamard transform (PHT). (The PHT was also later used in the Twofish cipher.)

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