Abstract
To date, the basic idea for implementing stream ciphers has been confined to individual standalone designs. In this paper, we introduce the notion of integrated implementation of multiple stream ciphers within a single architecture, where the goal is to achieve area and throughput efficiency by exploiting the structural similarities of the ciphers at an algorithmic level. We present two case studies to support our idea. First, we propose the merger of SNOW 3G and ZUC stream ciphers, which constitute a part of the 3GPP LTE-Advanced security suite. We propose HiPAcc-LTE, a high performance integrated design that combines the two ciphers in hardware, based on their structural similarities. The integrated architecture reduces the area overhead significantly compared to two distinct cores, and also provides almost double throughput in terms of keystream generation, compared with the state-of-the-art implementations of the individual ciphers. As our second case study, we present IntAcc-RCHC, an integrated accelerator for the stream ciphers RC4 and HC-128. We show that the integrated accelerator achieves a slight reduction in area without any loss in throughput compared to our standalone implementations. We also achieve at least 1.5 times better throughput compared to general purpose processors. Long term vision of this hardware integration approach for cryptographic primitives is to build a flexible core supporting multiple designs having similar algorithmic structures.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By a ‘standalone implementation’, we mean the design and analysis of a cipher when it is considered not as a part of the integrated design. From an integrated architecture of ciphers X and Y, say, we obtain a standalone implementation of X by removing all sequential and combinational components that are unique to Y, and are not shared by X. Thereafter, we perform X-specific optimizations on the rest of the architecture to get best performance for cipher X.
References
3GPP TS 33.401 v11.0.1. 3rd Generation Partnership Project, Technical Specification Group Services and Systems Aspects. 3GPP System Architecture Evolution (SAE): Security Architecture. Release 11, June 2011
3rd Generation Partnership Project: Long Term Evaluation Release 10 and beyond (LTE-Advanced). Proposed to ITU at 3GPP TSG RAN Meeting, Spain (2009)
Debraize, B., Corbella, I.M.: Fault analysis of the stream cipher Snow 3G. In: Fault Diagnosis and Tolerance in Cryptography (FDTC’09), September (2009)
Ekdahl, P., Johansson, T.: A new version of the stream cipher SNOW. In: Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC’02), LNCS, vol. 2595, pp. 47–61. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-41: SNOW 3G flow through core. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-41. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-400: SNOW 3G key stream generator. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-400. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-403: SNOW 3G look aside core. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-403. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-410: ZUC key stream generator. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-410. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-411: ZUC look aside core. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-411. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Elliptic Technologies Inc. CLP-412: ZUC flow through core. http://www.elliptictech.com/en/products-a-solutions/hardware/cryptographic-engines/clp-412. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Intel Corporation: Intel advanced encryption standard instructions (AES-NI). http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-advanced-encryption-standard-instructions-aes-ni/. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
IP Cores Inc: SNOW 3G encryption core. http://ipcores.com/Snow3G.htm. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Kitsos, P., Selimis, G., Koufopavlou, O.: High performance ASIC implementation of the SNOW 3G stream cipher. In: IFIP/IEEE VLSI-SOC’08—International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, Greece (2008)
Liu, Z., Zhang, L., Jing, J., Pan, W.: Efficient pipelined stream cipher ZUC algorithm in FPGA. In: First Int’l Workshop on ZUC Algorithm, China (2010)
Matthews, D.P., Jr.: System and method for a fast hardware implementation of RC4. US Patent Number 6549622, Campbell, CA, April. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6549622.html (2003). Accessed 5 Aug 2011
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Secure Hash Standard (SHS): Federal information processing standards publication (FIPS) 180-2. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsFIPS.html. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Schaumont, P.R., Kuo, H., Verbauwhede, I.M.: Unlocking the design secrets of a 2.29 Gb/s Rijndael processor. In: Design Automation Conf. (DAC’02), USA (2002)
Schliebusch, O., Chattopadhyay, A., Steinert, M., Braun, G., Nohl, A., Leupers, R., Ascheid, G., Meyr, H.: RTL processor synthesis for architecture exploration and implementation. In: Design, Automation & Test in Europe (DATE’04)—Designers Forum, Paris, France (2004)
Sen, S., Gupta, Chattopadhyay, A., Khalid, A.: HiPAcc-LTE: an integrated high performance accelerator for 3GPP LTE stream ciphers. In: INDOCRYPT’11, LNCS, vol. 7107, pp. 196–215. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Software performance results from the eSTREAM Project. eSTREAM, the ECRYPT stream cipher project. http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/stream/perf/#results. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Specification of the 3GPP Confidentiality and Integrity Algorithms UEA2 & UIA2. Document 2: SNOW 3G specification. ETSI/SAGE Specification, Version: 1.1, 6 September 2006
Specification of the 3GPP Confidentiality and Integrity Algorithms 128-EEA3 & 128-EIA3. Document 2: ZUC Specification. ETSI/SAGE Specification, Version: 1.5, 4 January 2011
Synopsys Processor Designer: Synopsys Inc. http://www.synopsys.com/. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
The current eSTREAM Portfolio. eSTREAM, the ECRYPT stream cipher project. http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/stream/index.html. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Wu, H.: The stream cipher HC-128. The current portfolio of eSTREAM, the ECRYPT stream cipher project. http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/stream/hcpf.html. Accessed 5 Aug 2011
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This is an extended version of the conference paper [19] by Sen Gupta, Chattopadhyay and Khalid, presented at INDOCRYPT 2011. Summary of changes: Sections 1 and 2 have been considerably revised. Sections 3 and 4 are based on [19], with major revision in Section 4. Sections 4.5, 4.6 and 5 are completely new contributions in this work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sen Gupta, S., Chattopadhyay, A. & Khalid, A. Designing integrated accelerator for stream ciphers with structural similarities. Cryptogr. Commun. 5, 19–47 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12095-012-0074-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12095-012-0074-6
Keywords
- Stream ciphers
- Integrated accelerator
- ASIC
- Area efficiency
- High throughput
- 3GPP LTE-Advanced
- SNOW 3G
- ZUC
- RC4
- HC-128