what text encryption algorithms are being used nowadays that are secure? Obviously I am not interested in DES or 3-DES that google shows me and which can break...
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1What do you mean by text encryption? Do you mean modern encryption algorithms that work on digital data? Have you ever heard the AES, ChaCha? – kelalaka Nov 19 '19 at 21:36
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I am doing simulations on ns-3, and I need algorithms to encrypt/decrypt text messages. AES yes, ChaCha no first time I hear this. – just_learning Nov 19 '19 at 21:42
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1You might want to use a hybrid cipher, which involves asymmetric keys for a key exchange to create a shared secret (DH(E), ECDH(E)), pass it through HKDF, then use this as a symmetric key through AES, CTR mode is advised as its fast because it can be parallelized. – SamG101 Nov 19 '19 at 22:00
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I will use many and different encryption/decryption algorithms, so the more you suggest, the better... – just_learning Nov 19 '19 at 22:10
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2See Wikipedia block cipher and stream cipher page! – kelalaka Nov 19 '19 at 23:08
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Ok, Blowfish, RC5, IDEA can be used for real-time (or near-real time) text encryption/decryption? – just_learning Nov 20 '19 at 11:33
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Also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_cipher it has many schemes, which are capable for my case? – just_learning Nov 20 '19 at 12:44
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Possible duplicate of Are there any other highly trusted and secure symmetric encryption algorithms besides AES? – kelalaka Nov 20 '19 at 21:47
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@just_learning You have not upvoted or accepted any answers on the Stack Exchange network it seems. Reputation is an important factor in the way this gaming site works. Furthermore, it is important for people to know that a question has an acceptable answer. Please do accept acceptable answers; and note that you can change your choice whenever required (I'm just posting it here as this is your latest question on a site where I'm mod, I didn't even see that I answered this question myself). – Maarten Bodewes Nov 21 '19 at 20:03
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I upvote many answers..I don't know where the problem is – just_learning Nov 21 '19 at 20:22
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Generally we first encode the text to binary and then do the encryption. Then we can decrypt and decode to text again. If that suits your need then you can use any secure cipher. The conversion of a textual message to binary is called character encoding. UTF-8 is probably the most used encoding as it supports all Unicode characters & code points, keeps text relatively small and it is compatible with US ASCII. So there is generally no need for specialized text encryption algorithms.
If the ciphertext also needs to be text then you can perform an additional binary to text encoding. Before decryption you need to decode the encoding-specific text to binary again. Base 64 is probably the most used, as it is relatively efficient (6 bits per character) and ASCII (and thus UTF-8) compatible.
Maarten Bodewes
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