Feroz's Blog

The Advance Encryption Standard, also known as Rijndael.

"Rijndael is the block cipher algorithm recently chosen by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). It supercedes the Data Encryption Standard (DES). NIST selected Rijndael as the standard symmetric key encryption algorithm to be used to encrypt sensitive (unclassified) American federal information. The choice was based on a careful and comprehensive analysis of the security and efficiency characteristics of Rijndael's algorithm."

From what I understand it's used by the government, and it's made by two Belgian dudes.

"The Rijndael cipher was developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, and submitted by them to the AES selection process. Rijndael (pronounced "Rhine dall") is a wordplay with the names of the two inventors."

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard