Lucifer embodies a block-cipher cyrptographic system by which a data stream of any length is enciphered (or deciphered) on-line in groups of 16 bytes under control of a 128-bit cipher key. The system includes a method of message verification in which successive byte groups are linked together by redundant fields under cipher protection; validity is checked by the matching of these redundant fields after decipherment. Cipher keys, which may be private to each user, are entered either from a plug-in read-only-store, or from a magnetic-stripe card.
The organization of Lucifer is serial-parallel, one byte wide, and processing of a 16-character group requires 200 microseconds. The design includes the interface to a 2770 Data Communications System.
By: J. L. Smith
Published in: RC3326 in 1971
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