Studying AES on Wikipedia, I noticed a statement regarding some ongoing studies on the use of Kendall's Tau coefficient in cryptanalysis:
According to the Snowden documents, the NSA is doing research on whether a cryptographic attack based on tau statistic may help to break AES
This paper on Kendall's tau refers to the Pearson correlation coefficient, and in the related Wikipedia article we can read:
Pearson correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear correlation between two variables X and Y
It's somehow straightforward to think at the variables in this statement like the variables in linear cryptanalysis... is this correct?
Is the application of Kendall's tau a sort of power-up of Linear Cryptanalysis? How?
