Research on Block Cipher Technology

With the rapid advancement of information technology, Humanity will enter the era of the Internet of Things, with billions of IoT devices connected to the network, and network attacks targeting user privacy, network environment, etc. will continue to grow, data security faces growing challenges such as leakage, tampering, and forgery. Block ciphers play a vital role in modern cryptography by encrypting fixed-size data blocks with secret keys, thereby ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the evolution of block ciphers, tracing developments from the Data Encryption Standard (DES) to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). It examines key structural frameworks, including Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPN), Feistel Networks, and Add-Rotate-XOR (ARX) constructions, and evaluates their performance across various application scenarios. In addition, the paper discusses emerging research directions such as post-quantum cryptography, lightweight cipher design for resource-constrained environments, hybrid structural innovations, and automated cryptanalysis techniques, offering valuable insights into the future development of secure encryption algorithms.