Abstract: Many of the network security protocols employed today utilize symmetric block ciphers (DES, AES and CAST etc). The majority of the symmetric block ciphers implement the crucial substitution operation using look up tables, called substitution boxes. These structures should be highly nonlinear and have bit dispersal, i.e. avalanche, properties in order to render the cipher with resistant to cryptanalysis attempts, such as linear and differentialcryptanalysis. Highly secure substitution boxes can be constructed using particular Boolean functions as components that have certain mathematical properties which enhance the robustness of the whole cryptoalgorithm. However, enforcing these properties on SBoxes is a highly computationally intensive task. In this paper, we present a distributed algorithm and its implementation on a computing cluster that accelerates the construction of secure substitution boxes with good security properties. It is fully parametric since it can employ any class of Boolean functions with algorithmically definable properties and can construct SBoxes of arbitrary sizes. We demonstrate the efficiency of the distributed algorithm implementation compared to its sequential counterpart, in a number of experiments.
Abstract: In this contribution instances of a problem introduced by the differentialcryptanalysis of Feistel cryptosystems are formulated as optimization tasks. The performance of Evolutionary Computation methods on these tasks is studied for a representative Feistel cryptosystem, the Data Encryption Standard. The results indicate that the proposed methodology is efficient in handling this type of problems and furthermore, that its effectiveness depends mainly on the construction of the objective function. This approach is applicable to all Feistel cryptosystems that are amenable to differentialcryptanalysis.
