Hawkynt

Hermes8 (DarkCrypt)

Hermes8 byte-oriented stream cipher as shipped in the DarkCrypt Total Commander plugin. Built around the AES S-box with a 17-byte state register and an evolving 16-byte key register. 128-bit key, 128-bit IV.

Properties

Property	Value
Category	Stream Ciphers
Sub-category	Stream Cipher
Security status	🎓 Educational Only
Complexity	Intermediate
Inventor	Ulrich Kaiser (Hermes8); DarkCrypt variant by Alexander Myasnikov
Year	2005
Origin	🇷🇺 Russia
Source	algorithms/stream/darkcrypt-hermes.js

Parameters

Parameter	Supported values
Key sizes	16 bytes (128 bits)
Nonce sizes	16 bytes (128 bits)

Security

Status: 🎓 Educational Only

Known vulnerabilities

Issue	Description	Mitigation
Not selected for eSTREAM	Hermes8 was an eSTREAM Phase 1 candidate that was not advanced; the DarkCrypt variant is unanalysed.	Use a vetted cipher such as ChaCha20 or AES-GCM.

Documentation

• DarkCrypt plugin (Total Commander PlugRing)
• Hermes8 eSTREAM submission

Test vectors

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

Vector 1 — DarkCrypt Hermes - 128 zero bytes, key 00..0f, iv 0

Field	Value
key	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
iv	00000000000000000000000000000000
input	00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000
expected	896e260cddf5618498ce69e189f2c6e8 d2ece3bae069a04485b9853fec8bf3c4 ae6682ed94adc3854f080d1d161146d0 00e22ce9e71c72ea29808d5dcfcc7121 bbe2234825f52a48f29c5a833c0df270 b6da8d53350b29129d8e1be363200059 5582ceb16211c4f5dad13ab26b763663 25b6b9923a28e1becc05ad433a887a38

Vector 2 — DarkCrypt Hermes - encrypt 00..3f, key 00..0f, iv 0

Field	Value
key	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
iv	00000000000000000000000000000000
input	000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f 101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1f 202122232425262728292a2b2c2d2e2f 303132333435363738393a3b3c3d3e3f
expected	896f240fd9f0678390c763ea85ffc8e7 c2fdf1a9f47cb6539da09f24f096eddb 8e47a0ceb088e5a2672127363a3c68ff 30d31edad32944dd11b9b766f3f14f1e

---

← All algorithms

This site is open source. Improve this page.