# Tag Info

9

DES actually demonstrated that a Feistel structure was not a guarantee against attacks. In "academic" terms, DES is broken by both differential and linear cryptanalysis, because they require, respectively, $2^{47}$ chosen plaintexts and $2^{43}$ known plaintexts, whereas the DES key is (effectively) 56 bits. Of course, for practical attacks, we would brute ...

7

If such a network had only a single round, then you might have a valid concern. This is why there needs to be least three rounds, so that every bit from L can potentially affect every other bit from L (via R from the second round). It isn't a structural flaw, because multiple rounds are assumed. Changing this round structure would mean that it was no longer ...

7

No, this is not a structural weakness of Feistel networks. For instance, we know it can't hurt diffusion properties. Actually, we know that it's not a structural weakness. How do we know that? Because we have a proof of security for Feistel networks (under certain conditions and assumptions). Those proofs imply that there is not a structural weakness in ...

5

The question has morphed over time. I am answering the following. So to be sure, with DES, only when you encrypt something twice with a weak key. You get the back the original plaintext? That is correct as that is the definition of a DES weak key, a key for which encryption and decryption have the same effect. So when using DES in OFB mode with a ...

5

Well, AES is not a Feistel cipher because it's a substitution-permutation network instead. If I were taking a test that asked me why AES was not a Feistel cipher, this would be my argument: namely, that the structure of substitution-permutation networks is fundamentally different from that of Feistel networks. (Here one could elaborate on invertibility and ...

4

The simple way to build authenticated encryption using a Feistel Network is to build a Feistel based block cipher, then use one of the many modes of operation that turn a block cipher into an authenticated encryption scheme (eg CCM,OCB,GCM). For a good survey on the subject of modes-of-operation I would recommend this paper by Rogaway. It does not cover the ...

4

This will probably be OK. It does have some non-trivial side effects/caveats: The effective key length is reduced to 86 bits. Only the low 22 bits of each of the 4 key words will matter, so only 88 bits of the key material are relevant. Then, there are known equivalent-key properties of TEA that further reduce the effective key length to 86 bits. A ...

2

There seem to be some errors or inconsistencies in the question. If $P \oplus P' = [0000\delta 000]$, and we use the 2-round structure shown in the picture, then the corresponding ciphertext pairs should satisfy $C \oplus C' = [xyzt\delta000]$. This is different from what you wrote (did you omit the final swap shown in the picture above?). If we let ...

2

By definition, a Feistel network uses a series of rounds that split the input block into two sides, uses one side to permute the other side, then swaps the sides. As always, Wikipedia has a nice diagram. AES doesn't do this. Performing a round necessarily permutes the entire state. Each round consists of the SubBytes, ShiftRows, MixColumns, and AddRoundKey ...

2

Yes, you certainly can. If you want a variable-length authenticated encryption mode, then simply take any Feistel cipher in the OCB mode. If fixed-length is fine, then the following idea should work. Build a wide Feistel-based permutation (fixed-key blockcipher) $G$ and encrypt $$C = G(P||N||K)\oplus K,$$ where $N$ is nonce, $P$ is plaintext, $C$ is ...

1

Ff1,2,3 are basically inspired by LubyRack off constructions . At the core they differ in their round functions and key scheduling FF1 supports greater range of lengths and a tweak FF2 generates subkey for each iteration to thwart any side channel attacks FF3 has tweaks is split and used in rounding function, also the reverse the sub-strings of given ...

1

As a page at ibm.com indicates, there could have been a bit of a "contra" attitude against Feistel ciphers thanks to DES having seen the first breaks in it's security etc. Down with the Feistel structure! In most ciphers, the round transformation has the well-known Feistel structure. In this structure typically part of the bits of the intermediate ...

1

A linear transformation in a block cipher is also considered an substitution, just not a non linear one. When they talk about active s-boxes, they are talking about not specifically about the nonlinear s-box, but a level of input being substituted with a different output. Combining these across multiple rounds results in what they call 'active' s-boxes. ...

1

A quick follow up, there is a problem with using DES in OFB mode when you are not using the full feedback register. The generated keystream will become cyclic with on average a period of the order $2^{32}$ instead of $2^{64}$. See (R.R. Jueneman, “Analysis of certain aspects of Output Feedback Mode,” Advances in Cryptology, Proceedings Crypto’82, D. ...

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