BATON

For other uses, see Baton.

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BATON is a Type 1 block cipher in use since at least 1995 by the United States government to secure classified information.

While the BATON algorithm itself is secret, the public PKCS#11 standard includes some general information about how it is used. It has a 320-bit key and uses a 128-bit block in most modes, and also supports a 96-bit electronic codebook mode. 160 bits of the key are checksum material. It supports a "shuffle" mode of operation, like the NSA cipher JUNIPER. It may use up to 192 bits as an initialization vector, regardless of the block size.

In response to a Senate question about encrypted video links, NSA said that BATON could be used for encryption at speeds higher than those possible with Skipjack.

Usage

BATON is used in a variety of products and standards:

• APCO Project 25 (Public standard for land mobile radio) (Algorithm IDs 01 and 41)
• PKCS#11 (Public standard for encryption tokens)
• CDSA/CSSM (Another public standard)
• HAIPE-IS (NSA's version of IPsec)
• FNBDT (Advanced flexible voice security protocol)

• Thales Datacryptor 2000 (a British network-encryption box)
• SecNet-11 (a crypto-secure 802.11b PC Card, based on the Sierra chip)
• Fortezza Plus (a PC Card product, used in the STE)
• SafeXcel-3340 (a HAIPIS network-encryption box)
• Numerous embeddable encryption modules: AIM, CYPRIS, MYK-85, Sierra (microchip), etc.

See also

• Advanced Encryption Standard

External links

• PKCS documentation
• Discussion of BATON
• Quotes about BATON
• Senate security interview

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