Soter symmetric algorithm descriptor #

Soter algorithm descriptor is used by some cryptosystems to identify symmetric encryption algorithms. While in most cases it is used internally in API, some cryptosystems actually store corresponding descriptors with encrypted data.

Algorithm descriptors are 32-bit bitmasks with multiple fields:

      28      24      20      16      12       8       4       0
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|  alg. |  KDF  |  ---  |padding|  ---  |      key length       |
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

where

• algorithm (4 bits) defines the encryption algorithm
• KDF (4 bits) identifies built-in key derivation function
• padding (4 bits) defines padding in use, if any
• key length (12 bits) stores the symmetric key length

Some of the bits are currently unused and reserved. They are always set to zero.

Supported values for the algorithm are:

• 0x1 — AES-ECB (deprecated)
• 0x2 — AES-CTR
• 0x3 — AES-XTS
• 0x4 — AES-GCM

KDF choices are as follows:

• 0x0 — Soter KDF (or no KDF, depending on context)
• 0x1 — PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA-256

Supported padding options are:

• 0x0 — no padding
• 0x1 — PKCS#7 padding

Available key lengths are:

• 0x080 — 128 bits
• 0x0C0 — 192 bits
• 0x100 — 256 bits

Example #

Soter algorithm descriptors are most commonly found in Secure Cells where the most common options are AES-GCM variants. For example: 0x40010100, where you can see the data fields: