FSE 2004: Fast Software Encryption pp 127-142 | Cite as

Correlation Attacks Using a New Class of Weak Feedback Polynomials

  • Håkan Englund
  • Martin Hell
  • Thomas Johansson
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 3017)

Abstract

In 1985 Siegenthaler introduced the concept of correlation attacks on LFSR based stream ciphers. A few years later Meier and Staffelbach demonstrated a special technique, usually referred to as fast correlation attacks, that is very effective if the feedback polynomial has a special form, namely, if its weight is very low. Due to this seminal result, it is a well known fact that one avoids low weight feedback polynomials in the design of LFSR based stream ciphers.

This paper identifies a new class of such weak feedback polynomials, polynomials of the form \(f(x)=g_1(x) + g_2(x)x^{M_1}+\ldots + g_t(x)x^{M_{t-1}}\) where g 1,g 2,...,g t are all polynomials of low degree. For such feedback polynomials, we identify an efficient correlation attack in the form of a distinguishing attack.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Håkan Englund
    • 1
  • Martin Hell
    • 1
  • Thomas Johansson
    • 1
  1. 1.Dept. of Information TechonolgyLund UniversityLundSweden

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