Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2017/655

A Real-time Inversion Attack on the GMR-2 Cipher Used in the Satellite Phones

Jiao Hu and Ruilin Li and Chaojing Tang

Abstract: The GMR-2 cipher is a kind of stream cipher currently being used in some Inmarsat satellite phones. It has been proven that such cipher can be cracked using only one frame known keystream but with a moderate executing times. In this paper, we present a new thorough security analysis of the GMR-2 cipher. We first study the inverse properties and the relationship of the cipher's components to reveal a bad one-way character of the cipher. Then by introducing a new concept called valid key chain" according to the cipher's key schedule, we for the first time propose a real-time inversion attack using one frame keystream. This attack contains three phases: (1) table generation (2) dynamic table looks-up, filtration and combination (3) verification. Our analysis shows that, using the proposed attack, the exhaustive search space for the 64-bit encryption key can be reduced to about $2^{13}$ when one frame (15 bytes) keystream is available. Compared with previous known attacks, this inversion attack is much more efficient. Finally, the proposed attack are carried out on a 3.3GHz platform, and the experimental results demonstrate that the 64-bit encryption-key could be recovered in around 0.02s on average.

Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / Satellite Phone, Stream Cipher, GMR-2, Cryptanalysis, Inversion Attack

Date: received 3 Jul 2017, last revised 7 Jul 2017

Contact author: securitylrl at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

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Short URL: ia.cr/2017/655

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