A Review on Evolution of Symmetric Key Block Ciphers and Their Applications

Abstract

This paper reviews the state of the art of symmetric key block cipher designs and their essential security role in several applications like IoT, low-power devices like motes, etc. Many engineering curricula have one course on network and internetwork security at the undergraduate level. However due to the expanding research on newer and newer primitives and host of published literature in the area of protocols, algorithms for encryption, authentication, message integrity, key exchange, it is of interest to deliver (teach) as much information as possible within one or two semester courses in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. In this paper, our objective is to present a comprehensive review of design approaches including Feistel, SPN, ARX, and other hybrid structures and also highlight various cryptanalysis techniques and attacks. We focus on what topics that need to be covered and to what depth in this paper. Further, this paper also presents the performance metrics that are commonly reported in the literature when comparing block cipher implementations. These are necessary since the students should finally be able to appreciate how to benchmark and know what industry needs.