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Abstract

Biryukov (The Design of a Stream Cipher LEX, Proceedings of Selected Areas in Cryptography, 2006 Springer, pp 67-75, 2007) presented a new methodology of stream cipher design called leak extraction. The stream cipher LEX, based on this methodology and on the AES block cipher, was selected to round 3 of the eSTREAM competition. The suggested methodology seemed promising, and LEX, due to its elegance, simplicity, and performance, was expected to be selected to the eSTREAM portfolio. In this article we present a key recovery attack on LEX. The attack requires about 240 bytes of key-stream produced by the same key (possibly under many different IVs), and retrieves the secret key in time of about 2100 AES encryptions. Following a preliminary version of our attack, LEX was discarded from the final portfolio of eSTREAM.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)357-373
Number of pages17
JournalDesigns, Codes, and Cryptography
Volume67
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2013

Keywords

  • AES
  • LEX
  • Stream cipher design

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics
  • Applied Mathematics

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