Software and hardware design of a multi-cipher cryptosystem

Multi-cipher and multi-mode cryptosystems are widely used for hardware acceleration in modern security protocols. In a session of communication, these protocols can only use an algorithm along with its operation mode. The switching of cipher algorithms and operation modes can occur between sessions of communication. This paper introduces a multi-cipher cryptosystem (MCC) which enables a cryptosystem to use multiple cipher algorithms concurrently in a session of communication. With MCC, a file can be encrypted by different cipher algorithms with diverse parameters. The implementation of a sample MCC is introduced in this paper using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). When the number of crypto-processors in MCC meets the requirements of pipelined scheduling, the throughput can reach its maximum value.