Since the last year, I spent a lot of time studying cryptography and data protection on Linux. Since then I use cryptographic methods to cipher all my hard drives.

I started using loop-AES and then switched to dm-crypt + LUKS. This are really great and secure methods to protect your data. I spent some time using Twofish, but I found it slower than AES (I always use 256bit keys).

Recently however, I’ve heard that there are some Linux kernel optimized modules for specific hardware. I’ve header reports that these assembly implementations are more than 5 times faster than the C AES standard module.

Since I’m running ate 64bits on my server (Athlon 64 3500+), I decided to give it a try:

$ rmmod aes; modprobe aes_x86_64

And OH MY GOD!! It seems that I have a new machine!! This is completely different!! Thank you ASM sick guys!

PS – For you with x86 (Pentium or higher) use aes-i585