Hawkynt

MARS-512 (DarkCrypt)

MARS variant from the DarkCrypt Total Commander plugin: standard MARS round structure (8 forward mixing + 16 keyed core + 8 backward mixing rounds) with the key expansion generalized to a 64-byte (512-bit) key via modulo indexing into the key-word array, beyond the official spec’s 56-byte maximum.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Block Ciphers
Sub-category	Block Cipher
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Advanced
Inventor	IBM (Carolynn Burwick, Don Coppersmith, et al.); DarkCrypt variant by Alexander Myasnikov
Year	1998
Origin	🇷🇺 Russia
Source	algorithms/block/darkcrypt-mars-512.js

Parameters

Parameter	Supported values
Key sizes	64 bytes (512 bits)
Block sizes	16 bytes (128 bits)

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

Known vulnerabilities

Issue	Description	Mitigation
Non-standard key size	512-bit key exceeds the official MARS specification’s 448-bit maximum; the key-expansion generalization used to support it (arbitrary Nk via modulo indexing) is an unanalyzed DarkCrypt-specific extension.	Use AES or another vetted cipher.

Documentation

• DarkCrypt plugin (Total Commander PlugRing)
• IBM MARS Specification

Test vectors

3 vectors ship with this algorithm and run in the test suite. Byte values are hexadecimal.

Vector 1 — DarkCrypt Mars-512 — zero key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
input	00000000000000000000000000000000
expected	3f994f870ea5d1f13e593d5848ea71cb

Vector 2 — DarkCrypt Mars-512 — incrementing key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f 101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f 202122232425262728292a2b2c2d2e2f 303132333435363738393a3b3c3d3e3f
input	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
expected	8d199c945f9b6dee2b61acb42e6607a1

Vector 3 — DarkCrypt Mars-512 — shifted incrementing key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	0102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f10 1112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f20 2122232425262728292a2b2c2d2e2f30 3132333435363738393a3b3c3d3e3f40
input	101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f
expected	9a1d3b13f9027ee033cb11ed176fb7e2

---

← All algorithms

This site is open source. Improve this page.