Microgaming Works With Triple Data Encryption Standard

Data encryption has become a very important part of the security on the Internet. Such company as Microgaming, which creates online venturing entertainments and software for casinos, has to use special technologies for protecting financial and personal info of the customers.
This developer has gained such popularity because of the serious attitude to the safety level of its products. It works with various ciphering methods. One of the most efficient options – triple DES.

The reason why it is worth to use 3-DES include:
• Increased key length;
• Strong attack resistance.

However, this enhanced version of data encryption standard was just for a transitional period until AES came to surface in a complete and tested form.
The reason why Microgaming uses triple DES is the opportunity to easily adopt the software for it. As a result, the company has a high level of safety with little efforts.

Algorithm

The characteristics of such cipher include 192-bit key size (it can be divided into three ones per 64 bits each). The key (s) is (are) substituted with 3 sub items: one for encrypting, another for decrypting and the last one for repeated encoding. Despite, the altered DES works much slower than its origin, it provides much stronger protection.

Interestingly, the keys have a little less size than it is, though, the actual length is 56 bits, because not all bytes are used (some of them can be left aside as not important).

3-KEY Triple DES

This variant of algorithms implies generating an array K (which is composed of K1, K2, and K3). The cipher structuring includes:

• Encrypting the initial data with the first key;
• Decoding of the result from the stage 1 with the K2;
• Encoding the outcome with K3 (i.e. getting the final cipher).

2-KEY Triple DES

The other way of working with DES is almost identical to above-described one, but with only K1 and K2. The process will look like this: ciphering with the first array (K1), deciphering with the K2 and then encoding the outcome with the K1 again (in the end you’ll get 112-bit chain).

Modes of 3DES

The encryption algorithm described in this article has several modes that can be applied when encoding a large amount of info. These are 3-EBC and 3-CBC.

Triple ECB

The Electronic code book can be considered as the easiest of the encoding modes, which cuts the text into even parts for a separate encryption. Due to the simplicity of the process, it is the most prevalent kind.

Triple CBC

It has some advantages over the previously discussed method, but it is more complex in use. The CBC mode (at some points similar to the ECB) works this way: XORing the input with the previously generated ciphertext before switching to the encoding process. Thus, each separate block of the code depends on all initial blocks of texts.

For making unique messages, there is a special option added in the 1st block (Initialization Vector). Therefore, as additional steps are necessary to implement such cipher block, the plaintext will be much more difficult to discover for unauthorized parties without decryption keys.

In conclusion, advanced security measures are more time-consuming, but for the company that cares about the safety of its customers, it is necessary to make all possible precautions.