Block Cipher Design Principles Questions

Core principles and practical considerations for designing and analyzing block ciphers. Coverage includes Feistel network and substitution permutation network structures, design and analysis of substitution boxes and linear layers, key schedule design, block size and number of rounds trade offs, modes of operation and their security implications, resistance to differential and linear cryptanalysis and related key attacks, meet in the middle considerations, provable security statements where applicable, and implementation issues such as constant time design and side channel resistance. Candidates should be able to reason about both mathematical properties and engineering trade offs in cipher design.