Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2006/217

Statistical Analysis of the MARS Block Cipher

Andrey Pestunov

Abstract: The work contains a statistical investigation of the MARS block cipher --- one of the AES finalists. It is shown that 8 MARS round ciphertext can be recognized from a uniform distribution with the help of the ``Book Stack"\, test providing that $2^{18}$ blocks of plaintexts and $2^{20}$ bytes of memory are avaliable. The previous published attacks on this cipher were only theoretical with unrealistic resource requirements.

Category / Keywords: block ciphers, cryptanalysis, AES

Date: received 28 Jun 2006

Contact author: an24 at gorodok net

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Version: 20060629:131240 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2006/217

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