Lesson plan

Simon (cipher)

Simon is a family of lightweight block ciphers publicly released by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013. Simon has been optimized for performance in hardware implementations, while its sister algorithm, Speck, has been optimized for software implementations. The NSA began working on the Simon and Speck ciphers in 2011. The agency anticipated some agencies in the US federal government would need a cipher that would operate well on a diverse collection of Internet of Things devices while maintaining an acceptable level of security.

Back to article

Article summary

Simon is a family of lightweight block ciphers publicly released by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013. Simon has been optimized for performance in hardware implementations, while its sister algorithm, Speck, has been optimized for software implementations. The NSA began working on the Simon and Speck ciphers in 2011. The agency anticipated some agencies in the US federal government would need a cipher that would operate well on a diverse collection of Internet of Things devices while maintaining an acceptable level of security.

Key claims

  1. release date: 2013 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "2013". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1364003813

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.