New Encryption Mode Brings Sincerity and Discretion to Low-Cost Android Devices

Adantium, developed by Google, brings communication encryption to bear on storage security.

Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading

February 12, 2019

1 Min Read
Dark Reading logo in a gray background | Dark Reading

Android devices come in a wide range of CPU power and memory configurations. Until recently, those on the lower end of the range weren't required to offer encrypted storage. The reason? The most common encryption scheme, AES256, requires too much from the CPU: The device's performance would have become unacceptably slow.

Now engineers at Google have developed a technique based on an encryption technique used in browser security and named for the maidenhair fern (denoting sincerity and discretion) to bring secure storage to these less expensive devices without bringing apps to a standstill.

The new encryption mode, called Adantium, uses the ChaCha stream cipher adapted from HTTPS encryption. The stream cipher is faster on lower-powered devices because its operation is based on the additions, rotations, and XORs available on every CPU; it doesn't require the built-in encryption primitives common on higher-powered processors.

ChaCha20 has been the basis for Google's HTTPs encryption since 2014, so its engineers have experience with the protocol and a high degree of certainty that using it for disk or file encryption will be both fast and secure. A paper on the implementation, Adiantum: length-preserving encryption for entry-level processors, will be presented at the Fast Software Encryption conference (FSE 2019) in March.

Read here and here for more.

INT19-Logo-HorizDates-3035.png

 

 

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry's most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

About the Author

Dark Reading Staff

Dark Reading

Dark Reading is a leading cybersecurity media site.

Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly discovered vulnerabilities, data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to your email inbox.

You May Also Like


More Insights