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New results on the genetic cryptanalysis of TEA and reduced-round versions of XTEA

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Abstract

Recently, a quick and simple way of creating very efficient distinguishers for cryptographic primitives such as block ciphers or hash functions, was presented and proved useful by the authors. In this paper, this cryptanalytic attack (named genetic cryptanalysis after its use of genetic algorithms) is shown to be successful when applied over reduced-round versions of the block cipher XTEA. Efficient distinguishers for XTEA are proposed for up to 4 cycles (8 rounds). Additionally, a variant of this genetic attack is also introduced, and their results over the block cipher TEA presented, which are the most powerful published to date.

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References

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Correspondence to Juliio César Hernández Castro.

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Julio César Hernández Castro, Ph.D.: He received Graduate Degree in Mathematics at Complutense University, M.Sc. in Coding Theory and Network Security at Valladolid University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carlos III University. His current research is fundamentally oriented to find and develop applications of techniques of artificial intelligence to cryptography and computer security. He has published more than 50 papers in cryptography, cryptanalysis and network security at International Journals and Conferences. He loves chess and go. At this moment, he is a Postdoctoral researcher at LIFL, Universite de Lille I, France.

Pedro Isasi Viñuela: He received Graduate and Doctor in Computer science by the Polytechnical University of Madrid in 1994. Currently he is Professor of Computational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science in Carlos III University. His research is focused on the field of Artificial intelligence, on problems of Optimization and automatic learning, in evolutionary systems and in artificial neural networks. He has published two books in the area.

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Hernández Castro, J.C., Isasi Viñuela, P. New results on the genetic cryptanalysis of TEA and reduced-round versions of XTEA. New Gener Comput 23, 233–243 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037657

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037657

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