The Advanced Encryption Standard peripheral
(AES) provides a means for symmetric-key encryption of 128-bit blocks, in compliance to
NIST specifications.
A symmetric-key algorithm requires the same key for both encryption and decryption.
Different key sizes are supported. The key size determines the
number of repetitions of transformation rounds that convert the input (called the
"plaintext") into the final output ("ciphertext"). The number of rounds of repetition is as
follows:
- 10 rounds of repetition for 128-bit
keys
- 12 rounds of repetition for 192-bit
keys
- 14 rounds of repetition for 256-bit
keys