Paper Presentation & Seminar Topics: The Rabbit Stream Cipher - Design and Security Analysis

The Rabbit Stream Cipher - Design and Security Analysis

Abstract:

The stream cipher Rabbit was _rst presented at FSE 2003 [6]. In the paper at hand, a full security analysis of Rabbit is given, focusing on algebraic attacks, approximations and di_erential analysis. We determine the algebraic normal form of the main nonlinear parts of the cipher as part of a comprehensive algebraic analysis. In addition, both linear and nonlinear approximations of the next-state function are presented, as well as a di_erential analysis of the IV-setup function. None of the investigations have revealed any exploitable weaknesses. Rabbit is characterized by high performance in software with a measured encryption/decryption speed of 3.7 clock cycles per byte on a Pentium III processor.