Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2015/700

Four Neighbourhood Cellular Automata as Better Cryptographic Primitives

Jimmy Jose and Dipanwita RoyChowdhury

Abstract: 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.

Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / Cellular Automata, nonlinearity, CA rule 30

Original Publication (in the same form): AUTOMATA 2015 - 21st International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems, Exploratory Paper

Date: received 13 Jul 2015, last revised 13 Jul 2015

Contact author: jimmy at cse iitkgp ernet in

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: 9 pages. Presented at AUTOMATA 2015, June 8--10, 2015, Turku, Finland. 21st International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems. Exploratory Papers of AUTOMATA 2015. TUCS Lecture Notes, No. 24, pages 74-82, June 2015

Version: 20150714:044638 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2015/700

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