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A comparison of the 3DES and AES encryption standards

Article  in  International Journal of Security and its Applications · July 2015

DOI: 10.14257/ijsia.2015.9.7.21

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 International Journal of Security and Its Applications
Vol.9, No.7 (2015), pp.241-246
http://dx.doi.org/10.14257/ijsia.2015.9.7.21

A Comparison of the 3DES and AES Encryption Standards

Noura Aleisa
[email protected]

Abstract
A comparison of two encryption standards, 3DES and AES is presented. It may seem
that DES is insecure and no longer of any use, but that is not the case since the DES and
3DES algorithms are still beyond the capability of most attacks in the present day.
However, the power of computers is increasing and stronger algorithms are required to
face hacker attacks. AES has been designed in software and hardware and it works
quickly and efficiently, even on small devices such as smart phones. With a large block
size and a longer keys, AES will provide more security in the long term.

Keywords: encryption, cryptography, cryptology, algorithm, cryptanalysis, AES, 3DES

1. Introduction
It may be surprising to discover that encryption has been known for thousands of years,
and methods have varied from those simply based on paper and pencil to others using
more complex and specialized mechanical equipment, and today has resulted in the use of
computer techniques, encryption applications, and digital signatures.
4000 years ago, the Egyptians used hieroglyphic symbols to confuse the reader and this
is believed to be the first attempt at cryptography. Several other ancient civilizations have
also been found to have used cryptography techniques. For instance, the Arabic
civilization discovered cryptanalytic techniques and were the first to publish a systematic
analysis of cryptography. Another example is the great civilization of India, which has
been shown to have used numerous forms of cryptographic communication. They used a
finger communication system similar to the sign language or signing used by the hearing
and speech impaired today [7]. Cryptography is derived from the Greek word crypto,
which means secret, hidden, or concealed. The idea of cryptography is to allow two
people to communicate using a secure method in such a way that prevents an outsider
from understanding their messages. It is the art of secret writing which allows the passage
of information in hidden form so that only authorized people are able to understand it.
In the present day, any secure communication environment would not be complete
without cryptographic methods. Cryptology can provide a high level of security to any
sensitive information that needs to be protected, such as in emails, file transfers, saved
information on hard disks, backups, and so on. Cryptography is extremely important in
wireless communication because it is easier to break into than a hard-wired network.
The goal of this paper is to present the reader with an introduction to traditional
encryption, the benefits and drawbacks of encryption to the non-professional user, the
security provided by the data encryption algorithm 3DES against attackers, and to discuss
its merits in comparison with one of the first cyphers, AES. In this section, the world of
cryptography is introduced and a brief description of its history is mentioned. In the
second part, the advantages and disadvantages of using different encryption systems are
discussed. In the third part, the 3DES system and its security issues are explained. Finally,
I have introduced the reader is introduced to a comparison between 3DES and AES.

ISSN: 1738-9976 IJSIA

Copyright ⓒ 2015 SERSC
International Journal of Security and Its Applications
Vol.9, No.7 (2015)

2. Encryption Methodology
There are many reasons why we might want to encrypt data. For instance, individuals
may share the same work space with people they don’t trust. Another reason, in the
business world, is as an extra security layer for a company's sensitive data, such as
financial data, because this information might be of benefit to its competitors.
Furthermore, two people might want to ensure privacy in an email conversation,
transporting important information on a hard disk or a computer could be easy prey to
competitors without encryption, and companies might use encryption to store sensitive
personal data on their clients, such as credit cards information, and medical records.
Cryptology consists of both encryption and decryption; the original information is
referred to as “plaintext”, and the encrypted information as “ciphertext”. To convert the
plaintext to ciphertext an algorithm needs to be implement using a secret key to guarantee
security and create a digital signature. To encrypt plaintext to ciphertext, two types of
keys are available: symmetric or asymmetric.

2.1 Symmetric Key Encryption

Symmetric or single secret key encryption is one of the oldest encrypting methods and
is usually as simple as shifting the letters of the text by a specific number. Symmetric
keys provide only a single key for the encryption and decryption processes which can be a
number, a word, or random letters, and anyone with the key will have the ability to
decrypt the ciphertext. The difficulty in this process is delivering the key from the sender
to the recipient and ensuring that the recipient has received the key. If the key is lost or
obtained by a third party then the encrypted data become unavailable. One of the great
benefits of the secret key system is the ability to translate passwords easily with the key
and the speed of encryption. When compared to the asymmetric key system, the
symmetric key system is an attractive method since its application doesn't require the
external involvement of users.

2.2 Asymmetric Key Encryption

The asymmetric key system, also known as public key encryption, is more secure
because it is necessary to use two keys, a public and private one, to encrypt and decrypt a
text. The public key can be known to anyone, and the receiver will give the sender his
public key and the sender will use it to encrypt the text to be sent. The receiver will
receive the ciphertext and decrypt it using his private key. The private key is never
distributed, which is why the threat from a third party is considerably reduced because
without the private key the text can't be decrypted [2]. In order to get the public key to the
other person, a digital certificate is needed, which is a data package containing
information such as the organization name, certificate issued date, user's email and
country, and the public key that determines the personal identity of a user or server. When
a securely encrypted communication is required, a query will be sent over the network to
the receiver which will send back a copy of the certificate. The public key of the receiver
can be extracted from the copy which can also be used to identify the holder [6].
Even though the public and private keys in asymmetric cryptography have solved the
security problem of sending the key, it still has drawbacks in the area of security. Firstly,
public key encryption is much slower than single secret key encryption. Secondly, it is
only efficient for a small amount of data such as email, but not for bulk encryption.
Another disadvantage is the key validation problem; the published public-key could be
created for a specific person A but by another person B, so when someone wants to send
an encrypted message to A using his public key it will be sent to B instead. B can then
decrypt it with his private key and read a message. If we assume that B knows the real
public key of A then he could re-encrypt the message and send it again to A after
changing the context of the message. In theory, we can say that B is sitting in the middle

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of the conversation of two people and he has the ability to delete and modify the content
of the messages.

2.3 Digital Signatures

The importance of a signature, whether digitally or on paper, to confirm and document
the identity of the sender, especially in the sensitive and confidential correspondence,
cannot be overstressed. A digital signature does not mean the same thing as a written
signature, which may show information such as the sender's name and telephone number.
A digital signature is used to authenticate the identity of the sender and, for the encryption
mechanism, consists of the following steps. First, the sender generates a text message
hash, which uses certain algorithms not to encrypt the text but to generate a unique hash.
Changing one character of text (even by just one bit) will change the hash and it would
never generate the original text of that hash again. Secondly, the sender will encrypt the
generated hash for the text using his secret key and sends the message. Third, the receiver
will decrypt the hash using the public key of the sender. Finally, the receiver will generate
a new hash for the text and he will compare the two hashes; if they match, it will mean
that the sender is certainly the owner of the sender's public key and if they don't that will
mean that the message has been hacked. Digital signatures depend on the secret key of the
signer which can only be generated by him or herself [1].

3. Encryption Algorithms

3.1 Data Encryption Standard (DES)

On May 15, 1973, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) was developed at IBM as an
improvement on an older system called LUCIFER. DES was designed to work better in
hardware than software and is an algorithm which encrypts text in 64-bit blocks with a
56-bit key. The algorithm is applied in three stages. First of all, the plaintext is
constructed by permuting the bits of the text χ based on initial permutation IP which is
applied as x 0 = IP ( x ) = L 0 R 0 , where L 0 is the first 32 bits and R 0 is the last 32 bits.
Secondly, sixteen iterations of a specific function that includes permutation and
substitution phases are applied. We can write Lᵢ= Rᵢ– ı Rᵢ = Lᵢ – ı XOR f (Rᵢ – ı , Kᵢ ),
where K is the key and f is the function. Finally, an inverse permutation IPˉ¹ to the sixteen
bit string R and L to obtain the ciphertext using the y = IP -1 ( R 16 L 16 ) formula is
utilized [12].
It might seem to be an extremely complicated scheme and the decryption using DES
would require a completely different approach, but it might be a surprise to discover that
the same algorithm would work to decrypt the same text, the only difference being that
the process in decryption is applied in reverse [3].
Since the time DES was adopted in 1977, backdoor DES crackers have been developed
that can decode DES messages in less than a week. For instance, a “brute force” attack
tries as many keys as possible to decrypt ciphertext into plaintext by attaching a special
parallel computer using a million chips that try a million keys each per second. Another
attack was recorded in 1998, under the direction of John Gilmore of the EFF( Electronic
Frontier Foundation). A machine costing $220,000, called Deep Crack, was built to be
able to go through the whole 56-bit key and break it within 5 days by using 46 chips that
could test 90 billion keys a second [8].

3.2 Double DES

Because DES has already proved that a very competent algorithm can be considered
highly insecure and unreliable, methods were sought to reuse it by making it stronger and

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more secure, rather than writing a totally new algorithm. Two main improvements have
resulted in Double DES and Triple DES or 3DES.
Double DES essentially does twice what DES does with two keys uses in one
encryption process. If the attempt to crack the key in DES is 2⁵⁶, then the attempts to
crack two different keys consisting of n bits is 2²ⁿ. However, that is not quite true since
the concept of the meet-in-the-middle attack has been introduced which involves
encryption from one end and decryption from the other and matching the outputs in the
middle.

3.3 Triple or 3DES

With the idea that Double DES may not be strong enough to prevent a meet-in-the-
middle attack has led to the development of 3DES, which was developed in 1999 by IBM
by a team led by Walter Tuchman [11]. This type of attack is one of the main reasons why
double DES was replaced by Triple DES or 3DES, which is DES with three different
keys. It is essential to avoid having the same key for the encryption steps since the output
will only be a slower version of DES. 3DES has two forms, one requiring three
completely different keys and the other only two completely different keys.
The first method uses three keys to encrypt the plaintext, firstly using key k1, followed
by encryption with key k2, and lastly a third encryption is carried out with key k3. We
perform the operation C = EK3(EK2(EK1(P))) to encrypt the plaintext and P =
DK3(DK2( DK1(C))) for decryption. PGP and S/MIME are examples of products that use
the three keys 3DES. Even though 3DES uses three keys to provide a high level of
security, it still has a drawback since its required 56 * 3 = 168 bits for the keys, which can
be difficult to make work in practical situations. Because of this, the method of 3DES
using two keys has arisen.
In 3DES with two keys, encryption is applied using key k1, the output of the previous
step is decrypted using key k2. Finally, encryption of the output of step 2 is encrypted
again using key k1. We perform the operation C = EK1(DK2(EK1(P))) to encrypt the
plaintext and P = DK1(EK2(DK3(C))) for decryption. This method is also referred to as
Encrypt- Decrypt- Encrypt (EDE) [3].
3DES has advantages over previous algorithms in that it is easy to implement and more
secure, but may still not be completely secure. Another advantage is that 3DES can
perform single DES encryption if k3= k2= k1, which is sometimes desired in
implementations which also support single DES for legacy reasons. 3DES is very
efficient in hardware but not particularly in software. It is popular in financial systems as
well as for protecting biometric information in electronic passports [8].
However, when addressing security, 3DES has a flaw. With three independent keys, an
overall key length of 168 bits is generated, which is a summation of three 56 bit keys that
can face a meet-in-the-middle attack. For 3DES with two independent keys, the overall
key length is reduced to 112 bits, which might not be sufficient. Nevertheless, this
vulnerability will only come into effect with chosen plaintext or known plaintext attacks.
In addition, another vulnerability exists that could give an opportunity to a hacker to
retrieve a key and reduce the length of it, subsequently reducing the amount of time
needed to crack the key.
Attacks on two key 3DES have been documented but the required data made it
impractical due to the strong interdependency between the keys [4, 13]. It is still possible
to make a successful attack only if the keys are secure enough and a connection between
the security of the keys and the text can be made. Another attack was made in 1994 by
Matsui and Yamagishi called linear cryptanalysis (LC). This attack was one of the most
prominent plaintext attacks against block ciphers. LC uses a linear approximation to
describe the behavior of the block cipher and, given sufficient pairs of plaintext and its
corresponding ciphertext, key information can be obtained and increasing the data usually

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Vol.9, No.7 (2015)

gives rise to a higher probability of success. Matsui has successfully obtained a key with
243 known plaintexts [7].
Besides, 3DES is not practical when used to encrypt large messages, and there is the
issue of unsafe key transmission between the users. It is considered slow by todays
standards and outdated when compared to modern algorithms such as RC6 and Blowfish.

3.4 Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

On January 1997 in the US, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
announced a contest to develop a new encryption system and asked for some important
restrictions. The developed system had to be publicly disclosed, unclassified, free for use
worldwide, usable with 128, 192, and 256 bit key sizes, and symmetric block cipher
algorithms for blocks of 182 bits [10]. On 26 May 2002, 3DES was replaced by
Advanced Encryption standard (AES) [9]. AES and 3DES are commonly used block
ciphers, and which one to choose depends on the requirement. AES outperforms 3DES
both in software and in hardware.
AES is based on the Rijndael algorithm, created by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen,
which is a combination of a strong algorithm with a strong key. The Rijndael block cipher
can use different block and key lengths, such as 128, 192, and 256 bit. This versatility can
produce faster and more secure symmetric block ciphers. Another algorithm which might
be considered as an alternative to the Rijndael block cypher is the Twofish algorithm,
which can use blocks of 128 bits with keys up to 256 bits. The Rijndael algorithm’s
combination of security, performance, efficiency, implementability, and flexibility made
it an appropriate selection for AES [7].

4. A Comparison of 3DES and AES

In this section, the differences between the two encryption standards are highlighted in
terms of security and performance. AES uses three common key lengths, 128, 192, and
256 bits, whereas for 3DES the encryption key is still limited to 56 bits, according to the
DES standard. However, since it is equivalent to DES applied three times, the
implementer can choose to have either 2 or 3 different 56 bit keys, meaning that 3DES
can have encryption key lengths of 168, 112, or 56 bits. However, due to certain
vulnerabilities when reapplying the same encryption three times, a 168 bit key has a
reduced security equivalent to 112 bits, and using 112 bits has a reduced security
equivalent to 80 bits. The bottom line is that 3DES uses identical encryption to DES
whereas AES uses a completely different one, 3DES has a shorter length and weaker
encryption keys when compared to AES, and 3DES repeatedly applies encryption keys
while AES does not.
AES is strongly resistant to differential, truncated differential, linear, interpolation and
Square attacks, in contrast to 3DES which is vulnerable to differential and linear
cryptanalysis and it has weak substitution tables. In addition, the time required to check
all possible keys at 50 billion keys per second in AES for a 128-bit key is 5 x 1021 years,
whereas 3DES with a 56 bit key would take 400 days. In addition, 3DES uses a block
length of 64 bits which is half the size of an AES block length of 128 bits.
Another drawback when using 3DES is the need to switch encryption keys after every
32 GB of data transfer to reduce the possibility of leaks. Conversely, using AES provides
additional insurance since it is difficult to decypher data from identical blocks. The
process of 3DES encryption using 3DES is much longer than AES, because repeating the
same encryption process three times in 3DES takes some time when compared to the AES
encryption process which is much faster. However, this rule does not apply when we
include software and hardware. If we used 3DES with accelerated hardware that departs
to software implemented by AES, the results might be slower. In this case we have to
measure each one’s speed separately.

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5. Conclusions
When it comes to security, the winner is undoubtedly AES as it is considered
unbreakable in practical use. After discussing the flaws of DES, thus of 3DES as well, it
may seem that DES is insecure and no longer of any use, but that is not the case. The
1997 attack required a great deal of cooperation and the 1998 machine is too expensive to
implement, and so the DES and 3DES algorithms are still beyond the capability of most
attacks in the present day. However, the power of computers is increasing and stronger
algorithms are required to face hacker attacks. The response to that requirement is AES. It
has been designed in software and hardware and it works quickly and efficiently, even on
small devices such as smart phones. With a larger block size and longer keys using a 128
bit block and with 128, 192 and 256 bit keys, respectively, AES will provide more
security in the long term.
In conclusion, I am pretty confident that I have learned and introduced the main
concepts of traditional cryptography through these four parts. I also believe that I have a
general understanding of Triple Data Encryption Standards and its security issues
comparing with Advanced Encryption Standards.

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246 Copyright ⓒ 2015 SERSC

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