Symmetric Encryption Algorithms: Review and Evaluation Study

Abstract

The increased exchange of data over the Internet in the past two decades has brought data security and confidentiality to the fore front. Information security can be achieved by implementing encryption and decryption algorithms to ensure data remains secure and confidential, especially when transmitted over an insecure communication channel. Encryption is the method of coding information to prevent unauthorized access and ensure data integrity and confidentiality, whereas the reverse process is known as decryption. All encryption algorithms aim to secure data, however, their performance varies according to several factors such as file size, type, complexity, and platform used. Furthermore, while some encryption algorithms outperform others, they have been proven to be vulnerable against certain attacks. In this paper, we present a general overview of common encryption algorithms   and explain their inner workings. Additionally, we select ten different symmetric encryption algorithms and conduct a simulation in Java to test their performance. The algorithms we compare are: AES, BLOWFISH, RC2, RC4, RC6, DES, DESede, SEED, XTEA, and IDEA. We present the results of our simulation in terms of encryption speed, throughput, and CPU utilization rate for various file sizes ranging from 1MB to 1GB. We further analyze our results for all measures that have been tested, taking into account the level of security they provide.