Hardware realization of OCB mode for efficient authenticated encryption

Graduation date: 2006Authenticated-Encryption modes of operation have recently received great atten-\ud tion amongst researchers. Such modes of operation provide both privacy and authentic-\ud ity. A proposed mode in this category is the Offset Codebook mode (OCB) by Rogaway\ud et al. This mode shows great substantial advantages over conventional modes. In the\ud past when one wanted a shared-key mechanism that provided both privacy and authen-\ud tication one would first encrypt separately and then use a Message Authentication Code\ud (MAC). The cost of such a mechanism is equal to the cost of encryption plus the cost\ud of producing the MAC, usually done with different keys for each operation. The OCB\ud mode however uses one key and provides privacy and authenticity simultaneously and\ud with lower costs and higher speed then conventional methods.\ud Since this mode is relatively new, the proposed work provides a synthesizable\ud hardware implementation of the OCB encryption algorithm. Furthermore an efficient\ud hardware realization of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to be incorporated\ud in the OCB mode is provided. The architectural designs presented are analyzed and\ud synthesized in terms of performance and overall throughput. The results are evaluated\ud against other conventional modes in this area