International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

IACR News item: 16 July 2015

Jimmy Jose, Dipanwita RoyChowdhury
ePrint Report ePrint Report
Three-neighbourhood Cellular Automata (CA) are widely studied and accepted as suitable cryptographic primitive. Rule 30, a 3-neighbourhood CA rule, was proposed as an ideal candidate for cryptographic primitive by Wolfram. However, rule 30 was shown to be weak against Meier-Staffelbach attack. The cryptographic properties like diffusion and randomness increase with increase in neighbourhood radius and thus opens the avenue of exploring the cryptographic properties of 4-neighbourhood CA. This work explores whether four-neighbourhood CA can be a better cryptographic primitive. We construct a class of cryptographically suitable 4-neighbourhood nonlinear CA rules that resembles rule 30. One 4-neighbourhood nonlinear CA from this selected class is shown to be resistant against Meier-Staffelbach attack on rule 30, justifying the applicability of 4-neighbourhood CA as better cryptographic primitives.

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