Universal Test Sets for the Standard Encryption Algorithm

This paper describes the test sets that were devised at the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS) for hardware implementations of the standard encryption algorithm. These tests consist of a validation test set, which is being used at NBS to certify the correctness of vendors´ implementations of the algorithm, and a maintenance test set, which can be used to ensure reliability in the operation of such encryption devices in the field. Each of these test sets is universal in the sense that the tests are independent of any particular hardware implementation of the algorithm, but depend only on the abstract definition of the encryption function itself.