A comparative analysis of AES common modes of operation

Abstract

With the rapid increase of the Internet users, network security becomes very essential. Cryptography plays a major role in network security. However, cryptographic systems consume considerable amounts of resources, like memory, CPU time, encryption and decryption time. In this paper, we compared the most common block cipher modes of operation on AES according to the recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The comparison is done in terms of encryption time, decryption time, and throughput with variable data packet sizes. The results of the comparison are summarized and our observations are highlighted to help making informative decision when choosing the mode of operations for different applications with symmetric-key ciphers.