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Camellia

Security På svenska → Updated: 2026-10-11
More info
Creator
Mitsubishi Electric and NTT
Released
2000
Type
Block cipher
Spec
RFC 3713

A Japanese block cipher from 2000 with the same interface as AES, comparable security and a fraction of the users.

Camellia has a 128-bit block and 128-, 192- or 256-bit keys, exactly like AES. Under the hood it is a Feistel network of 18 or 24 rounds, punctuated every six rounds by special FL layers meant to break up patterns a cryptanalyst might exploit.

It was selected by the European NESSIE project and Japan's CRYPTREC, became an ISO standard and got its own TLS cipher suites. It went royalty-free in 2001. The trouble was timing: AES had already won, and once CPUs grew dedicated AES instructions there was little reason to pick anything else. Camellia lives on as the diplomatic second choice for anyone who would rather not keep every egg in one basket.

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