Serpent (cipher)

Serpent is a symmetric key block cipher that was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) contest, where it was ranked second to Rijndael. Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen.

Like other AES submissions, Serpent has a block size of 128 bits and supports a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The cipher is a 32-round substitution-permutation network operating on a block of four 32-bit words. Each round applies one of eight 4-bit to 4-bit S-boxes 32 times in parallel. Serpent was designed so that all operations can be executed in parallel, using 32 bit slices. This maximizes parallelism, but also allows use of the extensive cryptanalysis work performed on DES.

Serpent took a conservative approach to security, opting for a large security margin: the designers deemed 16 rounds to be sufficient against known types of attack, but specified 32 rounds as insurance against future discoveries in cryptanalysis. The official NIST report on AES competition classified Serpent as having a high security margin along with MARS and Twofish, in contrast to the adequate security margin of RC6 and Rijndael (currently AES). In final voting, Serpent had the least number of negative votes among the finalists, but scored second place overall because Rijndael had substantially more positive votes, the deciding factor being that Rijndael allowed for a far more efficient software implementation.

Cipher

In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. To encipher or encode is to convert information into cipher or code. In common parlance, 'cipher' is synonymous with 'code', as they are both a set of steps that encrypt a message; however, the concepts are distinct in cryptography, especially classical cryptography.

Codes generally substitute different length strings of characters in the output, while ciphers generally substitute the same number of characters as are input. There are exceptions and some cipher systems may use slightly more, or fewer, characters when output versus the number that were input.

Codes operated by substituting according to a large codebook which linked a random string of characters or numbers to a word or phrase. For example, "UQJHSE" could be the code for "Proceed to the following coordinates." When using a cipher the original information is known as plaintext, and the encrypted form as ciphertext. The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message, but is not in a format readable by a human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it.

Cipher (disambiguation)

A cipher is a method of encryption or decryption.

Cipher may also refer to:

Fiction

Characters

Groups

Music

Cipher (newuniversal)

Cipher (Jennifer Swann) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character appears in the newuniversal imprint of Marvel Comics, and is one of the four initial superhumans created by the White Event in 2006 (the others being Justice, Nightmask, and Star Brand). newuniversal, designated Earth-555 in the Marvel Comics multiverse, is a re-imagining of the New Universe imprint from the late 1980s. The name Cipher actually refers to two things: a powerful extra-dimensional glyph (tattoo) that confers superhuman powers on a sentient being, and the name of the being that wields the glyph. Cipher is a new superhuman created by Warren Ellis and Salvador Larroca who were inspired by the original Spitfire and the nature of the Star Brand itself (as an extra-dimensional tool of near-unlimited power), combined with strong conceptual ties to Iron Man.

Fictional character biography

Project Spitfire

Essentially nothing is known about Dr. Jennifer Swann’s early life, or where she earned her doctorate. Sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s she was hired by the NSA to work on Project Spitfire, taking her father’s previous position there. Jennifer continues the work her father, Dr. Joseph Swann, began in 1959 on the H.E.X. (Human Enhancement eXperimental) initiative, an armored exoskeleton that is intended to enable its wearer to combat superhumans with a wide variety of weapons. The original suit was created by Anthony Stark in 1959 who became Cipher in the "The Fireworks" event in 1955, and is an alternate version of Tony Stark (Iron Man) from the mainstream Marvel Universe. Prior to the events in newuniversal #1, neither Jennifer nor her father were able to perfect the design, both suffering broken bones during testing.

Serpent (novel)

Serpent is the first book in the NUMA Files series of books co-written by best-selling author Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos, and was published in 1999. The main character of this series is Kurt Austin and Joe Zevala.

Summary

This is the first book with Cussler's new hero Kurt Austin.

The main plot is about a group of men who call themselves "The Brotherhood" and have ties to a 15th-century religious order. The group in modern times has attempted to hide and destroy all evidence of pre-Columbian contact between the New and Old Worlds.

The book begins with the wrecking of the ships SS Andrea Doria and MS Stockholm and moves to modern times with gun fights and chases from Boston and Washington DC to Africa and Mexico. The introduction of replacements for Dirk Pitt and his sidekick does not change Cussler's plot.

In 1956, off the coast of Nantucket Island, a crew member of the Stockholm causes the collision with the Andrea Doria then disappears. After the collision, a waiter aboard the Andrea Doria witnesses the murder of several men beside an armored vehicle in the hold of the ship.

Serpent (software)

Serpent is a continuous-energy Monte Carlo reactor physics code capable for highly detailed, three-dimensional burnup calculation. It is under current development at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland since 2004 under the original name of "Probabilistic Scattering Game". The code was originally developed with two-dimensional lattice physics calculations in mind; however, the code provides that the geometry can be generally expanded to three-dimensions.

The Serpent code makes use of an energy-grid restructuring of cross-sections and delta-ray tracking for speed increases during the neutron transport simulation.

The Serpent code is often used for generating cross-sections for deterministic reactor physics codes.

See also

References

Serpents in the Bible

Serpents (Hebrew: נחש‎ nāḥāš) are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in religious and cultural life of ancient Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Greece. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life and healing.Nachash, Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb-form meaning to practice divination or fortune-telling. In the Hebrew Bible, Nachash occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in Eden. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, it is also used in conjunction with saraph to describe vicious serpents in the wilderness. Tanniyn, a form of dragon-monster, also occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Exodus, the staffs of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a nachash for Moses, a tanniyn for Aaron. In the New Testament, the Book of Revelation makes use of ancient serpent and the Dragon several times to identify Satan or the devil. (Rev 12:9; 20:2)