AES - 2026 ACF Regionals - Buzzpoints App

Question

Modern devices often implement this cipher in hardware to both increase speed and decrease the attack surface for timing-related side-channel attacks. For 10 points each:

[10m] What cipher won a competition by NIST (“nist”) in 2001 to become the most commonly used standard cipher?

ANSWER: AES [or Advanced Encryption Standard; or Rijndael (“RINE-dale”)]

[10h] Block ciphers like AES can be used to construct this other type of cipher, which include the Chacha and Salsa20 ciphers. These ciphers encrypt plaintext bit by bit by XORing them with an encrypted sequence of characters.

ANSWER: stream ciphers

[10e] The encrypted keystream in a stream cipher must have this property to ensure the ciphertext is unpredictable. An insecure method of generating numbers with this property may rely on the system clock as an initial seed.

ANSWER: pseudorandomness [or randomness; accept random number generation or pseudorandom number generation; accept stochasticity; prompt on RNG or PRNG by asking “what does that stand for?”]

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Summary


California (North)	Main Site	Y	3	13.33	100%	33%	0%
California (South)	Main Site	Y	4	15.00	100%	25%	25%
Canada	Main Site	Y	12	11.67	100%	17%	0%
Florida	Main Site	Y	3	10.00	100%	0%	0%
Great Lakes	Main Site	Y	5	10.00	100%	0%	0%
Lower Mid-Atlantic	Main Site	Y	9	10.00	89%	0%	11%
Midwest	Main Site	Y	8	13.75	100%	38%	0%
Northeast	Main Site	Y	5	16.00	100%	40%	20%
Overflow	Main Site	Y	3	13.33	100%	33%	0%
South Central	Main Site	Y	2	10.00	100%	0%	0%
Southeast	Main Site	Y	8	10.00	88%	0%	13%
UK	Main Site	Y	6	10.00	100%	0%	0%
Upper Mid-Atlantic	Main Site	Y	9	11.11	100%	11%	0%
Upstate NY	Main Site	Y	4	10.00	100%	0%	0%

Data


Berkeley B	Berkeley A	0	0	10	10
Berkeley C	Berkeley D	10	0	10	20
Stanford B	Stanford A	0	0	10	10
UCLA B	Arizona State	0	0	10	10
UCSD C	UC Santa Barbara	0	0	10	10
UCLA A	UC Irvine	0	0	10	10
McGill B	Brock	0	0	10	10
Guelph	Toronto E	0	0	10	10
Waterloo B	McGill A	10	0	10	20
McMaster A	Queen's	0	0	10	10
Toronto B	Ottawa	0	0	10	10
Simon Fraser	Toronto C	0	0	10	10
Toronto D	Toronto Metropolitan	0	0	10	10
Toronto F	McMaster B	0	0	10	10
Waterloo A	UBC A	10	0	10	20
Carleton University	UBC B	0	0	10	10
Western A	Western B	0	0	10	10
Toronto G	Western C	0	0	10	10
UCSD A	UCSD B	10	10	10	30
Florida C	Central Florida B	0	0	10	10
Central Florida A	Florida A	0	0	10	10
Central Florida C	Florida B	0	0	10	10
Michigan A	Ohio State B	0	0	10	10
Pittsburgh	CWRU B	0	0	10	10
Michigan B	Michigan State	0	0	10	10
CWRU A	Michigan C	0	0	10	10
Ohio State A	Ohio State C	0	0	10	10
Liberty A	North Carolina B	0	0	10	10
NC State A	Liberty B	0	10	10	20
Duke	North Carolina A	0	0	10	10
South Carolina B	James Madison B	0	0	0	0
Virginia Tech B	South Carolina A	0	0	10	10
Virginia	James Madison A	0	0	10	10
Wake Forest	NC State B	0	0	10	10
William and Mary	VCU	0	0	10	10
North Carolina C	Virginia Tech A	0	0	10	10
Chicago B	Illinois A	0	0	10	10
Chicago A	Chicago E	0	0	10	10
Illinois C	Indiana C	10	0	10	20
Indiana B	Northwestern B	0	0	10	10
Notre Dame A	Northwestern C	0	0	10	10
Chicago D	Northwestern D	0	0	10	10
Purdue A	Notre Dame B	10	0	10	20
Chicago C	Purdue B	10	0	10	20
Dartmouth A	Brandeis A	10	10	10	30
Harvard B	Brandeis B	0	0	10	10
Dartmouth B	Brown	0	0	10	10
Southern Connecticut State	Harvard A	0	0	10	10
MIT	Yale	10	0	10	20
Missouri B	Carleton College	0	0	10	10
Georgia Tech A	Minnesota A	0	0	10	10
Claremont	Washington B	10	0	10	20
Texas A&M A	Murray State A	0	0	10	10
Texas A	Texas B	0	0	10	10
Bruin	WashU A	0	0	10	10
Georgia Tech C	Georgia Tech B	0	0	10	10
Alabama A	Louisville B	0	0	10	10
WashU B	Kentucky	0	10	0	10
Mississipi State	Alabama B	0	0	10	10
Tennessee A	Georgia Tech D	0	0	10	10
Tennessee B	Sewanee	0	0	10	10
Louisville A	Vanderbilt B	0	0	10	10
City St. George's	Cambridge B	0	0	10	10
Edinburgh B	Bristol	0	0	10	10
Oxford A	Imperial C	0	0	10	10
Durham	Oxford B	0	0	10	10
Imperial A	UCL	0	0	10	10
Catholic	Maryland B	0	0	10	10
Columbia C	Rutgers B	10	0	10	20
Georgetown	Swarthmore	0	0	10	10
John Jay	Johns Hopkins B	0	0	10	10
Columbia A	Johns Hopkins A	0	0	10	10
NYU A	Maryland A	0	0	10	10
NYU B	Columbia B	0	0	10	10
Rutgers A	Maryland C	0	0	10	10
Vassar	NYU C	0	0	10	10
LSE	Cambridge C	0	0	10	10
Binghamton B	Binghamton A	0	0	10	10
Cornell A	Cornell B	0	0	10	10
Cornell C	Rochester	0	0	10	10
Penn State	RIT	0	0	10	10