Hawkynt

SAFER-SK128 (DarkCrypt)

SAFER SK-128 block cipher (James Massey, strengthened key schedule by Lars Knudsen). 64-bit block, 128-bit key. This DarkCrypt build uses 8 rounds (the SK-64 recommendation) rather than the SK-128-standard 10.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Block Ciphers
Sub-category	Block Cipher
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Intermediate
Inventor	James Massey (SAFER); strengthened key schedule by Lars Knudsen
Year	1995
Origin	🇨🇭 Switzerland
Source	algorithms/block/darkcrypt-safer-sk128.js

Parameters

Parameter	Supported values
Key sizes	16 bytes (128 bits)
Block sizes	8 bytes (64 bits)

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

Known vulnerabilities

Issue	Description	Mitigation
Small block size	64-bit block size is vulnerable to birthday-bound attacks on large volumes of data.	Avoid encrypting large amounts of data with a single key.

Documentation

• DarkCrypt plugin (Total Commander PlugRing)
• SAFER (Wikipedia)
• Announcement of a Strengthened Key Schedule for the Cipher SAFER (J.L. Massey)

Test vectors

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

Vector 1 — DarkCrypt Safer128 — zero key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	00000000000000000000000000000000
input	0000000000000000
expected	62c4803deb82506d

Vector 2 — DarkCrypt Safer128 — incrementing key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
input	0001020304050607
expected	f9820c2fd85d91b6

Vector 3 — DarkCrypt Safer128 — shifted incrementing key/plaintext

Field	Value
key	0102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f10
input	1011121314151617
expected	4334e11aac2fdd2c

---

← All algorithms

This site is open source. Improve this page.