FPGA Implementation of an Improved Attack against the DECT Standard Cipher

Michael Weiner, Erik Tews, Benedikt Heinz, Johann Heyszl

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The DECT Standard Cipher (DSC) is a proprietary stream cipher used for enciphering payload of DECT transmissions such as cordless telephone calls. The algorithm was kept secret, but a team of cryptologists reverse-engineered it and published a way to reduce the key space when enough known keystreams are available [4]. The attack consists of two phases: At first, the keystreams are analyzed to build up an underdetermined linear equation system. In the second phase, a brute-force attack is performed where the equation system limits the number of potentially valid keys. In this paper, we present an improved variant of the first phase of the attack as well as an optimized FPGA implementation of the second phase, which can be used with our improved variant or with the original attack. Our improvement to the first phase of the attack is able to more than double the success probability of the attack, depending of the number of available keystreams. Our FPGA implementation of the second phase of the attack is currently the most cost-efficient way to execute the second phase of the attack.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInformation Security and Cryptology - ICISC 2010
Subtitle of host publication13th International Conference, Seoul, Korea, December 1-3, 2010, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsKyung Hyune Rhee, DaeHun Nyang
Place of PublicationBerlin
PublisherSpringer
Pages177-188
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-642-24209-0
ISBN (Print)978-3-642-24208-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010
Externally publishedYes
Event13th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology, ICISC 2010 - Seoul, Korea, Republic of
Duration: 1 Dec 20103 Dec 2010
Conference number: 13

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
PublisherSpringer
Volume6829
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference13th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology, ICISC 2010
Abbreviated titleICISC
Country/TerritoryKorea, Republic of
CitySeoul
Period1/12/103/12/10

Keywords

  • DECT
  • DECT Standard Cipher
  • DSC
  • Stream Cipher
  • FPGA
  • Hardware-Accelerated Cryptanalysis

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