cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...

, the Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) is a

block cipher In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called ''blocks''. Block ciphers are specified cryptographic primitive, elementary components in the design of many cryptographic protocols and ...

notable for its simplicity of description and

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy. Industry-specific definitions Computer science In computer science, an implementation is a real ...

, typically a few lines of code. It was designed by David Wheeler and Roger Needham of the Cambridge Computer Laboratory; it was first presented at the Fast Software Encryption workshop in

Leuven Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. Th ...

in 1994, and first published in the proceedings of that workshop. The cipher is not subject to any

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

Properties

TEA operates on two 32-bit

unsigned integers In computer science, an integer is a datum of integral data type, a data type that represents some range of mathematical integers. Integral data types may be of different sizes and may or may not be allowed to contain negative values. Integers a ...

(could be derived from a 64-bit data