Adiantum (data encryption standard)

2019: Announcement

On February 7, 2019 Google submitted the new standard enciphering of data for inexpensive low-productive devices, like budget Android-smartphones and gadgets to areas Internet of Things.

The standard under the name Adiantum is created for data encryption in the equipment which is based not on new ARMv8 processors and therefore does not support the algorithms Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) used in the majority of modern smartphones and tablets.

Google submitted the new data encryption standard for cheap devices

In particular, Adiantum is intended for the devices working on old ARM Cortex-A7 processors in which there are no special hardware solutions necessary for start of AES. The smartwatch and smart TVs and also inexpensive phones belong to such devices, for example.

On such devices enciphering of AES is performed so slowly that can lead to quality degradation of work of users: applications launch takes much more time, and the device functions much more slowly, says Google.

Because of these problems of Google exempted such devices from the general requirement of work with AES. But the company was always an active supporter of enciphering as such technologies help users to protect the confidential data on the Internet and digital identification of the personality.

For this reason Adiantum — the standard eliminating this space and guaranteeing that devices of the low level could use the same security level as more expensive the equipment was developed, Eugene Liderman, the director of the strategy of mobile security in the Android Security & Privacy Team group of Google company says.

According to Liderman, Adiantum allows to cipher local data without prejudice to system performance.^[1]

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