MARS: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

In cryptography, MARS is a block cipher which was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) process; the cipher was selected as a finalist. The design team included Don Coppersmith who had been involved in the creation of the previous Data Encryption Standard (DES) twenty years earlier.

MARS has a 128-bit block size and a variable key size of between 128 and 448 bits (in 32-bit increments). Unlike most block ciphers, MARS has a heterogeneous structure. Several rounds of a cryptographic core are "jacketed" by unkeyed mixing rounds.