Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a cryptographic algorithm designed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to protect sensitive information. It was introduced in 2001 as FIPS-197 standard and is the most widely used symmetric encryption algorithm. AES is considered to be secure enough to become a worldwide standard for both commercial and government applications.

AES is a block cipher which puts data into blocks of 128 bits (16 bytes) and encrypts them using a secret key. Each block is encrypted with the same key and the blocks are XORed, making AES an effective and secure algorithm. It is one of the most secure encryption algorithms, as it has been approved for multiple US Government cryptographic use cases.

AES is based on a substitution-permutation network, a type of symmetric encryption algorithm that encrypts data using multiple rounds of substitution and permutation operations. The algorithm uses a combination of bit permutation, bit substitution, and XOR operations to encrypt data.

AES is widely used due to its high security and speed, as it can be used to encrypt massive chunks of data quickly. In addition, its short key length means that it is easier to use than other encryption algorithms.

As AES is now used in many areas where secure communication is needed, it has become a standard in fields such as banking, finance, and military applications. For this reason, it is necessary to use up-to-date, hardware-accelerated implementations of AES to ensure optimal security.