Advanced Encryption Standard process

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the block cipher ratified as a standard by National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States (NIST), was chosen using a process markedly more open and transparent than its predecessor, the aging Data Encryption Standard (DES). This process won plaudits from the open cryptographic community, and helped to increase confidence in the security of the winning algorithm from those who were suspicious of backdoors in the predecessor, DES.
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