NAME

    Crypt::Serpent - Crypt::CBC compliant Serpent block cipher encryption module

SYNOPSIS

    use Crypt::Serpent;
    
    my $cipher = new Crypt::Serpent $key;

    my $ciphertext = $cipher->encrypt($plaintext);
    my $plaintext = $cipher->decrypt($ciphertext);

DESCRIPTION

    From the Tropical Software Serpent page...

    "Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham and Lars Knudsen
    as a candidate for the Advanced Encryption Standard. It has been
    selected as one of the five finalists in the AES competition.
    Serpent is faster than DES and more secure than Triple DES. It
    provides users with a very high level of assurance that no shortcut
    attack will be found. To achieve this, the algorithm's designers
    limited themselves to well understood cryptography mechanisms, so
    that they could rely on the wide experience and proven techniques
    of block cipher cryptanalysis. The algorithm uses twice as many
    rounds as are necessary to block all currently known shortcut
    attacks. This means that Serpent should be safe against as yet
    unknown attacks that may be capable of breaking the standard 16
    rounds used in many types of encryption today. However, the fact
    that Serpent uses so many rounds means that it is the slowest of
    the five AES finalists. But this shouldn't be an issue because it
    still outperforms Triple DES. The algorithm's designers maintain
    that Serpent has a service life of at least a century."

    "Serpent is a 128-bit block cipher, meaning that data is encrypted
    and decrypted in 128-bit chunks. The key length can vary, but for
    the purposes of the AES it is defined to be either 128, 192, or 256
    bits. This block size and variable key length is standard among all
    AES candidates and was one of the major design requirements specified
    by NIST. The Serpent algorithm uses 32 rounds, or iterations of the
    main algorithm."

SEE ALSO

    http://www.tropsoft.com/strongenc/serpent.htm

AUTHOR

    John Hughes (jhughes@frostburg.edu)

