Concurrent error detection in block ciphers

Today, encryption is widely used to incorporate privacy in data communications. Hardware implementations of encryption algorithms are fast enough to cope with the high throughput required in modern transmission channels. However, faults may occur in such circuits that can cause errors in encrypted text. A new technique is proposed to concurrently detect errors in block ciphers. It introduces very low area overhead in the system. In addition, a new encoding scheme is presented that has higher detection capabilities than other common error detection codes, when applied to encryption systems. Experiments conducted with widely used encryption algorithms (DES, RC5, IDEA and SKIPJACK) demonstrate the advantages of the proposed technique.