On the efficiency of the clock control guessing attack

  • Authors:
  • Erik Zenner

  • Affiliations:
  • Theoretische Informatik, University of Mannheim, Germany

  • Venue:
  • ICISC'02 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Information security and cryptology
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Many bitstream generators are based on linear feedback shift registers. A widespread technique for the cryptanalysis of those generators is the linear consistency test (LCT). In this paper, we consider an application of the LCT in cryptanalysis of clock-controlled bitstream generators, called clock control guessing. We give a general and very simple method for estimating the efficiency of clock control guessing, yielding an upper bound on the effective key length of a whole group of bitstream generators. Finally, we apply the technique against a number of clock-controlled generators, such as the A5/1, alternating step generator, step1-step2 generator, cascade generator, and others.