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SAFER

Secure And Fast Encryption Routine by James Massey. Uses exponential/logarithmic S-boxes based on GF(257) and Pseudo-Hadamard Transform for diffusion. Educational implementation supporting K-64 and K-128 variants.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Block Ciphers
Sub-category	Block Cipher
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Intermediate
Inventor	James Massey
Year	1993
Origin	🇨🇭 Switzerland
Source	algorithms/block/safer.js

Parameters

Parameter	Supported values
Key sizes	8 bytes (64 bits) to 16 bytes (128 bits) in steps of 8 bytes
Block sizes	8 bytes (64 bits)

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

Known vulnerabilities

Issue	Description	Mitigation
Weak keys in some variants	Certain key patterns may exhibit reduced security	Use random keys and strengthened variants when available
Small block size	64-bit block size vulnerable to birthday attacks	Avoid encrypting large amounts of data with single key

Documentation

• SAFER Specification
• Applied Cryptography - SAFER
• Wikipedia - SAFER

References

• Original SAFER Paper
• Crypto++ SAFER Implementation
• SAFER Analysis
• ETH Zurich Reference Implementation

Test vectors

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

Vector 1 — Crypto++ SAFER K-64 test 1 (zeros)

Field	Value
key	0000000000000000
input	0000000000000000
expected	032808c90ee7ab7f

Vector 2 — Crypto++ SAFER K-64 test 2 (sequential plaintext)

Field	Value
key	0000000000000000
input	0102030405060708
expected	7d28038633b92eb4

Vector 3 — Crypto++ SAFER K-64 test 3 (incrementing key/plaintext)

Field	Value
key	0102030405060708
input	1011121314151617
expected	71e5cf7f083a59c5

Vector 4 — Crypto++ SAFER K-64 test 4 (incrementing key/plaintext)

Field	Value
key	0102030405060708
input	18191a1b1c1d1e1f
expected	356f702cc7fa8161

Vector 5 — Crypto++ SAFER K-128 test 1 (12 rounds, mirrored key halves)

Field	Value
key	08070605040302010807060504030201
rounds	12
input	5051525354555657
expected	38e64dbf6e0f896e

Vector 6 — Crypto++ SAFER K-128 test 2 (12 rounds, mirrored key halves)

Field	Value
key	08070605040302010807060504030201
rounds	12
input	58595a5b5c5d5e5f
expected	7d8f014a902480fe

Vector 7 — Crypto++ SAFER K-128 test 3 (12 rounds, distinct key halves)

Field	Value
key	01020304050607080807060504030201
rounds	12
input	6061626364656667
expected	113511c22e7936df

Vector 8 — Crypto++ SAFER K-128 test 4 (12 rounds, distinct key halves)

Field	Value
key	01020304050607080807060504030201
rounds	12
input	68696a6b6c6d6e6f
expected	9eeb2d17c0581437

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