Cryptanalysis of Cryptographic Primitives and Related Topics
Abstract
This thesis has focused on the cryptanalysis of cryptographic primitives especially stream ciphers which is an important topic in cryptography. Additionally, the security of network coding is discussed and improved with a new scheme. First, a new statistical test, called Quadratic Box-Test, is presented. It can be used to evaluate the randomness quality of the pseudorandom sequences which can be the output of a cryptographic primitive. Moreover, it can be used as a distinguisher to attack stream ciphers, block ciphers and hash functions. In the second part of the thesis, some stream ciphers are analyzed and some successful attacks are presented. A modified algebraic attack is used against some clock controlled stream ciphers. In order to have successful attacks, the modified algebraic attack is accompanied by some new ideas. Moreover, the security of clock controlled stream ciphers based on its jumping system is investigated and discussed which resulted in some recommendations to design a clock controlled stream cipher. Finally, a differential distinguishing attack based on a fault attack is presented in this thesis to attack the Shannon stream cipher. The last part of this thesis focuses on the security of network coding which promises increased efficiency for future networks. For secure network coding, a new attack model is studied and the secrecy capacity is improved by a concatenated secret sharing scheme.
Has parts
Paper I: Igor Semaev and Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh, “New Statistical Box-Test And Its Power”, Submitted and published in the Cryptology ePrint Archive at 2011-06-06. Available at http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/297Paper II: Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh and Tor Helleseth,“Algebraic Attack on the Alternating Step(r, s) Generator”, IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT2010), pp. 2493 - 2497, June 13-18, 2010, Austin, Texas.
Paper III: Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh and Tor Helleseth,“Algebraic Attack on the Generalized Clock-Controlled Alternating Step Generators”, Proceeding of International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications (SPCOM2010), Invited talk, July 18-21, 2010, Bangalore, India.
Paper IV: Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh and Tor Helleseth,“Algebraic Attack on the Second class of Modified Alternating k-Generators”, Proceeding of Norsk informasjonssikkerhetskonferanse (NISK2010), 22nd - 24th November 2010, Gjøvik, Norway.
Paper V: Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh and Tor Helleseth,“Security Analysis of the Step(D, K) Generator with Respect to its Parameters”, International Journal of Cryptology Research, Volume 2(1), Page 39-49 and also presented in International Cryptology Conference 2010 (Cryptology2010), 29th June - 1st July 2010, Melaka, Malaysia.
Paper VI: Mehdi M. Hassanzadeh, Y. Esmaeili, Mohammad R. Sohizadeh, Matthew G. Parker and Tor Helleseth, “Differential Distinguishing attack on the Shannon Stream Cipher Based on Fault Analysis”, International Symposium on Telecommunications (IST2008), pp. 671-676, 27-28 Aug. 2008. Also included in the IEEE Xplore digital library.