Skip to main content

Weaknesses of COSvd (2,128) Stream Cipher

  • Conference paper
  • 1436 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3935))

Abstract

The COSvd (2,128) cipher was proposed at the ECRYPT SASC’2004 workshop by Filiol et. al to strengthen the past COS (2,128) stream cipher. It uses clock-controlled non-linear feedback registers filtered by a highly non-linear output function and was claimed to prevent any existing attacks. However, as we will show in this paper, there are some serious security weaknesses in COSvd (2,128). The poorly designed S-box generates biased keystream and the message could be restored by a ciphertext-only attack in some broadcast applications . Besides, we launch a divide-and-conquer attack to recover the secret keys from O(226)-byte known plaintext with high success rate and complexity O(2113), which is much lower than 2512, the complexity of exhaustive search.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Cramer, H.: Mathematical Methods of Statistics. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1946)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Filiol, E., Fontaine, C.: A new Ultrafast stream ciphers design: COS Ciphers. In: Honary, B. (ed.) Cryptography and Coding 2001. LNCS, vol. 2260, pp. 85–98. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Filiol, E., Fontaine, C., Josse, S.: The COSvd Ciphers. In: The State of the Art of Stream Ciphers: Workshop Record, Belgium, pp. 45–59 (October 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Erdmann, D., Murphy, S.: Henon Stream Cipher. Electronic Letters 28(9), 893–895 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Henon, M.: A two-dimensional mapping with a strange attactor. Communications in Mathematical Physics 50, 69–77 (1976)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Goldberg, D., Priest, D.: What Every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic. ACM Comp. Surv. 23(1), 5–48 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Mantin, I., Shamir, A.: A Practical Attack on Broadcast RC4. In: Matsui, M. (ed.) FSE 2001. LNCS, vol. 2355, pp. 152–164. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Wu, H., Bao, F.: Cryptanalysis of stream cipher COS (2,128) mode I. In: Batten, L.M., Seberry, J. (eds.) ACISP 2002. LNCS, vol. 2384, pp. 154–158. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Babbage, S.: The COS Stream Ciphers are Extremely Weak, http://eprint.iacr.org/2001/078/

  10. Babbage, S.: Cryptanalysis of the COS (2,128) stream ciphers, http://eprint.iacr.org/2001/106/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Zhang, B., Wu, H., Feng, D., Wang, H. (2006). Weaknesses of COSvd (2,128) Stream Cipher. In: Won, D.H., Kim, S. (eds) Information Security and Cryptology - ICISC 2005. ICISC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3935. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11734727_23

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11734727_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-33354-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-33355-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics