MARS

Designers:

Carolynn Burwick, Don Coppersmith, Edward D'Avignon, Rosario Gennaro, Shai Halevi , Charanjit Jutla, Stephen M. Matyas Jr., Luke O'Connor, Mohammad Peyravian, David Safford, Nevenko Zunicof

Published:

August? 1999

Description:

This is the "tweaked" version of MARS submitted as a second round AES candidate.

Alias:

"MARS-2"

References:

• [Def] Shai Halevi,
• "Modification for MARS,
• [Def, An] Carolynn Burwick, Don Coppersmith, Edward D'Avignon, Rosario Gennaro, Shai Halevi, Charanjit Jutla, Stephen M. Matyas Jr., Luke O'Connor, Mohammad Peyravian, David Safford, Nevenko Zunicof,
• [An] Scott Contini, Yiqun Lisa Yin,
• "On Differential Properties of Data-Dependent Rotations and Their Use in MARS and RC6,"
• Presented at the 2nd AES Conference.
• "MARS Attacks! Preliminary Cryptanalysis of Reduced-Round MARS Variants,"
• Presented at the 3rd AES Candidate Conference.
• "Impossible Differential on 8-Round MARS' Core,"
• March 15, 2000. Presented at the 3rd AES Candidate Conference.
• U.S. Patent Application: IBM application CR998021.
• [Test] IBM Corporation,
• MARS-2 Test Vectors,
• Key length: Minimum 128, maximum 448, multiple of 32 bits; default 128 bits.
• Block size: 16 bytes.

Patent status:

IBM has a patent pending on MARS. However, it has said that "... we are making MARS available on a royalty-free basis, worldwide, regardless of AES outcome."