Title: Simple cryptanalysis studies of a stream cipher

Authors: N. Nalini, G. Raghavendra Rao

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumkur 572103, Karnataka, India. ' National Institute of Engineering, Mysore 570008, Karnataka, India

Abstract: For the cryptanalysis of ciphers, other than brute-force methods, several optimisation heuristics have been tried; these efforts are computer-intensive in nature. To demonstrate the power of simple heuristic techniques not based on any optimisation formulation, we present a simple algorithm for the known ciphertext attack of 160-bit Software Encryption Algorithm (SEAL) cipher. We attempt differential and Chi-square cryptanalysis of SEAL. The concepts developed in the paper are useful in the cryptanalysis of block and stream ciphers.

Keywords: cryptanalysis; stream ciphers; software encryption algorithm; SEAL; differential cryptanalysis; chi-square cryptanalysis; cryptanalysis heuristics; ciphertext attack; block ciphers.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2008.019101

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.171 - 184

Published online: 28 Jun 2008 *

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