Modern and Lightweight Component-based Symmetric Cipher Algorithms: A Review

Information security, being one of the corner stones of network and communication technology, has been evolving tremendously to cope with the parallel evolution of network security threats. Hence, cipher algorithms in the core of the information security process have more crucial role to play here, with continuous need for new and unorthodox designs to meet the increasing complexity of the applications environment that keep offering challenges to the current existing cipher algorithms. The aim of this review is to present symmetric cipher main components, the modern and lightweight symmetric cipher algorithms design based on the components that utilized in cipher design, highlighting the effect of each component and the essential component among them, how the modern cipher has modified to lightweight cipher by reducing the number and size of these components, clarify how these components give the strength for symmetric cipher versus asymmetric of cipher. Moreover, a new classification of cryptography algorithms to four categories based on four factors is presented. Finally, some modern and lightweight symmetric cipher algorithms are selected, presented with a comparison between them according to their components by taking into considerations the components impact on security, performance, and resource requirements

Private Database Queries Using Quantum States with Limited Coherence Times

We describe a method for private database queries using exchange of quantum states with bits encoded in mutually incompatible bases. For technology with limited coherence time, the database vendor can announce the encoding after a suitable delay to allow the user to privately learn one of two items in the database without the ability to also definitely infer the second item. This quantum approach also allows the user to choose to learn other functions of the items, such as the exclusive-or of their bits, but not to gain more information than equivalent to learning one item, on average. This method is especially useful for items consisting of a few bits by avoiding the substantial overhead of conventional cryptographic approaches.Comment: extended to generalized (POVM) measurement

Heuristic search of (semi-)bent functions based on cellular automata

An interesting thread in the research of Boolean functions for cryptography and coding theory is the study of secondary constructions: given a known function with a good cryptographic profile, the aim is to extend it to a (usually larger) function possessing analogous properties. In this work, we continue the investigation of a secondary construction based on cellular automata (CA), focusing on the classes of bent and semi-bent functions. We prove that our construction preserves the algebraic degree of the local rule, and we narrow our attention to the subclass of quadratic functions, performing several experiments based on exhaustive combinatorial search and heuristic optimization through Evolutionary Strategies (ES). Finally, we classify the obtained results up to permutation equivalence, remarking that the number of equivalence classes that our CA-XOR construction can successfully extend grows very quickly with respect to the CA diameter

Can NSEC5 be practical for DNSSEC deployments?

NSEC5 is proposed modification to DNSSEC that simultaneously guarantees two security properties: (1) privacy against offline zone enumeration, and (2) integrity of zone contents, even if an adversary compromises the authoritative nameserver responsible for responding to DNS queries for the zone. This paper redesigns NSEC5 to make it both practical and performant. Our NSEC5 redesign features a new fast verifiable random function (VRF) based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), along with a cryptographic proof of its security. This VRF is also of independent interest, as it is being standardized by the IETF and being used by several other projects. We show how to integrate NSEC5 using our ECC-based VRF into the DNSSEC protocol, leveraging precomputation to improve performance and DNS protocol-level optimizations to shorten responses. Next, we present the first full-fledged implementation of NSEC5—extending widely-used DNS software to present a nameserver and recursive resolver that support NSEC5—and evaluate their performance under aggressive DNS query loads. Our performance results indicate that our redesigned NSEC5 can be viable even for high-throughput scenarioshttps://eprint.iacr.org/2017/099.pdfFirst author draf

Detecting Byzantine Attacks Without Clean Reference

We consider an amplify-and-forward relay network composed of a source, two relays, and a destination. In this network, the two relays are untrusted in the sense that they may perform Byzantine attacks by forwarding altered symbols to the destination. Note that every symbol received by the destination may be altered, and hence no clean reference observation is available to the destination. For this network, we identify a large family of Byzantine attacks that can be detected in the physical layer. We further investigate how the channel conditions impact the detection against this family of attacks. In particular, we prove that all Byzantine attacks in this family can be detected with asymptotically small miss detection and false alarm probabilities by using a sufficiently large number of channel observations \emph{if and only if} the network satisfies a non-manipulability condition. No pre-shared secret or secret transmission is needed for the detection of these attacks, demonstrating the value of this physical-layer security technique for counteracting Byzantine attacks.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, accepted to appear on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, July 201

Design and Cryptanalysis of a Customizable Authenticated Encryption Algorithm

It is common knowledge that encryption is a useful tool for providing confidentiality. Authentication, however, is often overlooked. Authentication provides data integrity; it helps ensure that any tampering with or corruption of data is detected. It also provides assurance of message origin. Authenticated encryption (AE) algorithms provide both confidentiality and integrity / authenticity by processing plaintext and producing both ciphertext and a Message Authentication Code (MAC). It has been shown too many times throughout history that encryption without authentication is generally insecure. This has recently culminated in a push for new authenticated encryption algorithms. There are several authenticated encryption algorithms in existence already. However, these algorithms are often difficult to use correctly in practice. This is a significant problem because misusing AE constructions can result in reduced security in many cases. Furthermore, many existing algorithms have numerous undesirable features. For example, these algorithms often require two passes of the underlying cryptographic primitive to yield the ciphertext and MAC. This results in a longer runtime. It is clear that new easy-to-use, single-pass, and highly secure AE constructions are needed. Additionally, a new AE algorithm is needed that meets stringent requirements for use in the military and government sectors. This thesis explores the design and cryptanalysis of a novel, easily customizable AE algorithm based on the duplex construction. Emphasis is placed on designing a secure pseudorandom permutation (PRP) for use within the construction. A survey of state of the art cryptanalysis methods is performed and the resistance of our algorithm against such methods is considered. The end result is an algorithm that is believed to be highly secure and that should remain secure if customizations are made within the provided guidelines

JPEG steganography with particle swarm optimization accelerated by AVX

Digital steganography aims at hiding secret messages in digital data transmitted over insecure channels. The JPEG format is prevalent in digital communication, and images are often used as cover objects in digital steganography. Optimization methods can improve the properties of images with embedded secret but introduce additional computational complexity to their processing. AVX instructions available in modern CPUs are, in this work, used to accelerate data parallel operations that are part of image steganography with advanced optimizations.Web of Science328art. no. e544