The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

A Survey on Fast Correlation Attacks

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

Fast correlation attacks, pioneered by Meier and Staffelbach in 1988, constitute an important class of attacks on stream ciphers. They exploit a correlation between the keystream and the output of a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) within the cipher. Several factors affect the feasibility of such an attack, e.g., the amount of available keystream and the number of taps in the LFSR. Notably, for a fixed number of taps, the length of the LFSR does not affect the complexity of the attack. When the register does not have a sufficiently small number of taps, however, the attacker will try to find parity check equations of low weight, at which point the length of the register does matter. In this paper, we go through the significant contributions to this field of cryptanalysis, reiterating the various algorithms that have been developed for finding parity check equations and performing the online stage on received keystream. We also suggest some new generalizations of Meier-Staffelbach's original formulations.

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

173-202

Publication/Series

Cryptography and Communications

Volume

4

Issue

3-4

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

Keywords

  • fast correlation attacks
  • stream ciphers
  • cryptanalysis

Status

Published

Research group

  • Crypto and Security

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1936-2455