Efficient rijndael encryption implementation with composite field arithmetic

Abstract

We explore the use of subfield arithmetic for efficient implementations of Galois Field arithmetic especially in the context of the Rijndael block cipher. Our technique involves mapping field elements to a composite field representation. We describe how to select a representation which minimizes the computation cost of the relevant arithmetic, taking into account the cost of the mapping as well. Our method results in a very compact and fast gate circuit for Rijndael encryption. In conjunction with bit-slicing techniques applied to newly proposed parallelizable modes of operation, our circuit leads to a high-performance software implementation for Rijndael encryption which offers significant speedup compared to previously reported implementations.