Blowfish

From Computing and Software Wiki

In cryptography, Blowfish is symmetric block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier. It is a fast and compact, that is, it provides a good encryption rate in software. There still exists no effective cryptanalysis of the algorithm and is therefore considered an extremely strong algorithm.

Blowfish was designed as an algorithm that could be used in everyday life by everybody, intended as a replacement of the Data Encryption Standard (DES). At that time most of the encryption algorithms in use were proprietary or kept secret by the governments, Blowfish broke away from that standard and Schneier placed it in the public domain to be used by anyone free of cost.

Blowfish Algorithm

Blowfish encrypts data in 64-bits blocks and has a variable key length between 32 and 448 bits. Also as Blowfish is a symmetric encryption algorithm, it uses the same secret key to encrypt and decrypt messages. A graphical representation of the blowfish algorithm can be seen in Figure 1.