A New Construction Method for Keystream Generators

Abstract

We introduce a new construction method of diffusion layers for Substitution Permutation Network (SPN) structures along with its security proofs. The new method can be used in block ciphers, stream ciphers, hash functions, and sponge constructions. Moreover, we define a new stream cipher mode of operation through a fixed pseudorandom permutation and provide its security proofs in the indistinguishability model. We refer to a stream cipher as a Small Internal State Stream (SISS) cipher if its internal state size is less than twice its key size. There are not many studies about how to design and analyze SISS ciphers due to the criterion on the internal state sizes, resulting from the classical tradeoff attacks. We utilize our new mode and diffusion layer construction to design an SISS cipher having two versions, which we call DIZY. We further provide security analyses and hardware implementations of DIZY. In terms of area cost, power, and energy consumption, the hardware performance is among the best when compared to some prominent stream ciphers, especially for frame-based encryptions that need frequent initialization. Unlike recent SISS ciphers such as Sprout, Plantlet, LILLE, and Fruit; DIZY does not have a keyed update function, enabling efficient key changing. © 2005-2012 IEEE.