Abstract
Algebraic attack is an important attack strategy against symmetric ciphers, particularly stream ciphers. The most vital issue of this attack strategy is to reduce the degree of the algebraic equations as much as possible in order to obtain a lower time complexity. This paper first presents one such means of obtaining low degree equations using the decomposition of Boolean functions. This method overcomes the three major drawbacks of fast algebraic attack. We discuss the general attack strategy using decomposable Boolean function. We also demonstrate the decomposition of some Boolean function used in practical stream ciphers. Then we find a bound on the degree of a function to be multiplied with a given function so that the product has low degree decomposition. The second major contribution of this paper is a new probabilistic algebraic attack for LFSR based stream cipher by using decomposition of Boolean function. Finally we apply our method to the stream cipher Grain-v1, which is one of the finalist of estream call for stream cipher proposals, by injecting fault in one bit of NFSR.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Armknecht, F.: Improving fast algebraic attacks. In: Fast Software Encryption, pp. 65–82. Springer, Berlin (2004)
Braeken, A., Preneel, B.: Probabilistic algebraic attacks. In: Cryptography and Coding, pp. 290–303. Springer, Berlin (2005)
Cid, C., Kiyomoto, S., Kurihara, J.: The RAKAPOSHI stream cipher. In: Information and Communications Security, pp. 32–46 (2009)
Courtois, N.: Fast algebraic attacks on stream ciphers with linear feedback. In: Advances in Cryptology—CRYPTO 2003, pp. 176–194 (2003)
Courtois, N., Meier, W.: Algebraic attacks on stream ciphers with linear feedback. In: Advances in Cryptology—EUROCRYPT 2003, pp. 345–359 (2003)
Courtois, N., Klimov, A., Patarin, J., Shamir, A.: Efficient algorithms for solving overdefined systems of multivariate polynomial equations. In: Advances in Cryptology—EUROCRYPT 2000, pp. 392–407. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Courtois, N., O’Neil, S., Quisquater, J.J.: Practical algebraic attacks on the Hitag2 stream cipher. In: Information Security, pp. 167–176 (2009)
Crama, Y., Hammer, P.L.: Boolean Models and Methods in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2010)
Cusick, T.W., Stănică, P.: Cryptographic Boolean Functions and Applications. Academic Press, Amsterdam (2009)
Dawson, E., Clark, A., Golic, J., Millan, W., Penna, L., Simpson, L.: The LILI-128 keystream generator. In: Proceedings of First NESSIE Workshop. Citeseer, Leuven (2000)
Faugre, J.C.: A new efficient algorithm for computing Gröbner bases (F4). J. Pure Appl. Algebra 139(1), 61–88. http://www-salsa.lip6.fr/~jcf/Papers/F99a (1999)
Faugre, J.C.: A new efficient algorithm for computing Gröbner bases without reduction to zero (F5). In: Proceedings of the 2002 International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation. ISSAC ’02, pp. 75–83. ACM, New York. http://www-salsa.lip6.fr/~jcf/Papers/F02a (2002)
Hell, M., Johansson, T., Maximov, A., Meier, W.: A stream cipher proposal: Grain-128. In: 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 1614–1618. IEEE, New York (2006)
Hell, M., Johansson, T., Meier, W.: Grain: a stream cipher for constrained environments. Int. J. Wirel. Mob. Comput. 2(1), 86–93 (2007)
Karmakar, S., Chowdhury, D.R.: Fault analysis of Grain-128 by targeting NFSR. In: Progress in Cryptology—AFRICACRYPT 2011, pp. 298–315. Springer, Berlin (2011)
Meier, W., Pasalic, E., Carlet, C.: Algebraic attacks and decomposition of Boolean functions. In: Advances in Cryptology—EUROCRYPT 2004, pp. 474–491. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Mihaljević, M.J., Gangopadhyay, S., Paul, G., Imai, H.: Internal state recovery of keystream generator LILI-128 based on a novel weakness of the employed Boolean function. Inf. Process. Lett. 112(21), 805–810 (2012a)
Mihaljević, M.J., Gangopadhyay, S., Paul, G., Imai, H.: Internal state recovery of grain-v1 employing normality order of the filter function. Inf. Secur. IET 6(2), 55–64 (2012b)
Segers, A.: Algebraic attacks from a Gröbner basis perspective. Master’s Thesis (2004)
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Roy, D., Datta, P. & Mukhopadhyay, S. Algebraic cryptanalysis of stream ciphers using decomposition of Boolean function. J. Appl. Math. Comput. 49, 397–417 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12190-014-0845-7
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12190-014-0845-7
Keywords
- Boolean function
- Algebraic attack
- Fast algebraic attack
- Decomposition of Boolean function
- Fault
- Grain-v1
- Probabilistic algebraic attack