MIT Media Lab – 2013 Legal Hack-a-thon on Identity

Today we had the privilege of hearing a presentation by Loius Wingers and Stefan Treatman-Clark on  a couple of lightweight ciphers from the NSA.  These are called SIMON and SPECK. The algorithms are not yet published, but they have a paper (pdf copy here) that shows some numbers on the performance of the proposed ciphers.

The SIMON and SPECK algorithms come in a family that range from 48-bits to 128-bits.  Since the target deployment area is low-power and low memory devices (i.e. RFID devices, etc), the requirement is that these algorithms do not use more than 2000 gates. The paper has a table showing the GE and throughput.

Louis and Stefan presented SIMON and SPECK at the 2013 Legal Hack-a-Thon and  the MIT Media Lab.