10.7 Where the Field Is Headed

Cryptography is a lively field; looking at the proceedings of the major conference, such as Crypto and Eurocrypt, you will see many new ideas and collegial challenges to older ones. NIST received approximately twenty proposals for the AES, from which it chose five finalists. Acknowledging that they had found no cryptanalytic flaws in any of the final five, the NIST researchers selected one for reasons of performance and implementation. The other four come from very respected cryptologists, and their continuing work is certainly worth watching.

The other area of interest is quantum cryptography. If it is to become viable , it will very soon move from the laboratory to model implementations .