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On the security of self-synchronous ciphers

  • Cryptographic Functions And Ciphers
  • Conference paper
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Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1270))

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Abstract

Self-synchronous encryption can provide private communications across channels that are prone to bit-slip (insertion/deletion) errors. Under these conditions, conventional synchronous stream ciphers suffer catastrophic message loss, whereas self-synchronous ciphers (SSCs) automatically re-synchronise after a short error burst, with no additional circuitry or protocols. In this paper we point out some security problems of SSCs which are unavoidable, basically due to the fact that all of their input is sliding ciphertext, which may be chosen by a cryptanalyst. Although apparently similar in structure to nonlinear filter generator stream ciphers, self-synchronous ciphers are subject to quite different cryptanalytic attacks, which we briefly describe. Finally, we present a new class of designs for SSCs which are intended to resist sliding input attacks by maintaining a uniform distribution of internal data values in the feedback stage and subsequently.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Security Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, 4001, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    William Millan & Ed Dawson

Authors
  1. William Millan
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  2. Ed Dawson
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Editor information

Vijay Varadharajan Josef Pieprzyk Yi Mu

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Millan, W., Dawson, E. (1997). On the security of self-synchronous ciphers. In: Varadharajan, V., Pieprzyk, J., Mu, Y. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1270. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027923

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027923

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63232-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69237-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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