An evolutionary computation attack on one-round TEA

In this work, one-round Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) is attacked with an Evolutionary Computation method inspired by a combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Harmony Search (HS). The system presented evaluates and evolves a population of candidate keys and compares paintext-ciphertext pairs of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Procedia computer science Vol. 6; pp. 171 - 176
Main Authors: Ma, Eddie Yee-Tak, Obimbo, Charlie
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 2011
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ISSN:1877-0509, 1877-0509
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In this work, one-round Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) is attacked with an Evolutionary Computation method inspired by a combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Harmony Search (HS). The system presented evaluates and evolves a population of candidate keys and compares paintext-ciphertext pairs of the known key against said population. We verify that randomly generated keys are the hardest to derive. Keys composed of words containing all on-bits are more difficult to break than keys composed of words containing all off-bits. Keys which have repeated words are easiest to derive. Finally, the present EC strategy is capable of deriving degenerate keys; this is most evident when keys are front loaded so that the first byte of each word has the highest density of on-bits.
ISSN:1877-0509
1877-0509
DOI:10.1016/j.procs.2011.08.033