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In Advanced Encryption Std, say after a ShiftRow operation, I want to perform MixColumns.

       State             MixColumn Matrix             Mixed ┏             ┓       ┏             ┓       ┏             ┓ ┃ d4 e0 b8 1e ┃       ┃ 02 03 01 01 ┃       ┃ 04 e0 48 28 ┃  ┃ bf b4 41 27 ┃       ┃ 01 02 03 01 ┃       ┃ 66 cb f8 06 ┃  ┃ 5d 52 11 98 ┃       ┃ 01 01 02 03 ┃       ┃ 81 19 d3 26 ┃  ┃ 30 ae f1 e5 ┃       ┃ 03 01 01 02 ┃       ┃ e5 9a 7a 4c ┃  ┗             ┛       ┗             ┛       ┗             ┛ 

Example taken from this flash file. I'm puzzled by the description at Wikipedia.

The flash told that after MixColumns, the 1st column of State is turned into the 1st column of the Mixed matrix. How is this so?

First of all, how to multiply a column by a matrix? The shapes don't match, or is there anything special in cryptography? Well, if we transpose the column, I still don't understand: ($\cdot$ means dot product, and here are my Attempts)

# 1: [d4 bf 5d 30]$\cdot$[02 01 01 03] = d4+d4+bf+5d+30+30+30 = 54 != 04

# 2: [d4 bf 5d 30]$\cdot$[02 01 01 03] = d4+d4+bf+5d+((30<<1) ^ 30) = 14 != 04

# 3: [d4 bf 5d 30]$\cdot$[02 03 01 01] = d4+d4+bf+bf+bf+5d+30 = 72 != 04

# 4: [d4 bf 5d 30]$\cdot$[02 03 01 01] = d4+d4+((bf<<1)^30)^11b+5d+30 = 0F != 04

What's happening?

  • 0
    `11b` here means `0x11b`. I'm not sure if it's what Wikipedia means. `^` is `xor`.2012-12-01
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    May be, https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/how-to-solve-mixcolumns can help you.2018-01-12

1 Answers 1

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All the matrix entries are elements of the Galois field $GF(2^8)$, using field poynomial $x^8 + x^4 + x^3 + x + 1$. There is an excellent Wikipedia article Rijndael mix columns which explains this very clearly.

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    Thank you, it worked! But what is a Galois field, and what's the magic about $+$ being $\oplus$ and that polynomial?2012-12-01
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    A Galois field is just another name for a finite field. There is another Wikipedia article, [Finite field arithmetic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_field_arithmetic), which uses Rijndael's field as an example.2012-12-01