A new class of unbalanced CAST ciphers and its security analysis

Zhu, Xia (1997) A new class of unbalanced CAST ciphers and its security analysis. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (16MB) [English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)

Abstract

The original CAST cipher is an efficient and secure private-key block cipher designed to be an alternative to the Data Encryption Standard (DES). In this thesis, we present a new class of unbalanced CAST ciphers which employs the same structure of S-box and round function of the original CAST cipher but has a lower memory requirement. Unbalanced CAST ciphers with one or two 8x32 S-boxes in the round function require only 1/4 or 1/2 the memory of the original CAST cipher, respectively. -- This thesis examines the application of differential and linear cryptanalysis, two of the most powerful methodologies for attacking private-key block ciphers, to the unbalanced CAST ciphers. The results of analysis show that a 48-round unbalanced CAST cipher with one 8 x 32 S-box and a 24-round unbalanced CAST cipher with two 8 x 32 S-boxes, both of which are equivalent to a 12-round original CAST cipher in efficiency, are resistant to both differential and linear cryptanalysis. -- We also investigate the unbalanced CAST ciphers from the perspective of information theory. The results suggest that the maximum static and dynamic input-output bit information leakages for the unbalanced CAST ciphers constructed by 8 x 32 S-boxes are much smaller than for DES. -- The conclusion reached by the thesis is that unbalanced CAST ciphers can be considered to be efficient, secure ciphers which require less memory than the original CAST cipher.

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