Encryption: The Effect of Algorithm Type and Plaintext Length on Encryption, Decryption, and Force-Cracking Times

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this project was to find, with a method of scoring, which encryption algorithm was the "best." Methods/Materials Using REALbasic and C++, I wrote an implementation of each algorithm (RSA, Blowfish, and IDEA) and timed the number of milliseconds that it took to encrypt and decrypt a varying amount of data. I calculated the estimated time to force-crack, and awarded points to the quickest and strongest algorithms, where the best algorithm was the one with the most points. Results IDEA, which was the slowest algorithm, accumulated the most points, probably because it was strongest. RSA, second most seure and second quickest, almost beat IDEA because of speed, but did not win because of the weight of not being strongest. Blowfish, which was the least secure, but most likely the quickest algorithm, got the least amount of points. Conclusions/Discussion There was a lot of differentiation among the speeds of each algorithm. IDEA had times of over 600ms, while Blowfish had times around 4ms. Each algorithm was very secure and relatively speedy. I doubt that IDEA, the most secure out of the algorithms I tested with over 2.4· 10^40 years to force crack, is even the most secure algorithm that has been developed. If I were to design an encryption algorithm, I would combine the speed of Blowfish with the strength of IDEA.

Competition history

• CSEF 2004 Mathematics & Software · Entry J1207

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Computational Sciences projects
• CSEF Computational Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2004 project