In this paper, we explore the security against integral attacks on well-known stream ciphers SNOW 3G and KCipher-2. SNOW 3G is the core of the 3GPP confidentiality and integrity algorithms UEA2 and UIA2, and KCipher-2 is a standard algorithm of ISO/IEC 18033-4 and CRYPTREC. Specifically, we investigate the propagation of the division property inside SNOW 3G and KCipher-2 by the Mixed-Integer Linear Programming to efficiently find an integral distinguisher. As a result, we present a 7-round integral distinguisher with 23 chosen IVs for KCipher-2. As far as we know, this is the first attack on a reduced variant of KCipher-2 by the third party. In addition, we present a 13-round integral distinguisher with 27 chosen IVs for SNOW 3G, whose time/data complexity is half of the previous best attack by Biryukov et al.

This paper investigates the security of KCipher-2 against differential attacks. We utilize an MILP-based method to evaluate the minimum number of active S-boxes in each round. We try to construct an accurate model to describe the 8-bit truncated difference propagation through the modular addition operation and the linear transformation of KCipher-2, respectively, which were omitted or simplified in the previous evaluation by Preneel et al. In our constructed model, the difference characteristics neglected in Preneel et al.'s evaluation can be taken into account and all valid differential characteristics can be covered. As a result, we reveal that the minimal number of active S-boxes is 25 over 15 rounds in the related IV setting and it is 17 over 24 rounds in the related IV-key setting. Therefore, this paper shows for the first time that KCipher-2 is secure against the related IV differential attack.

This paper presents a chosen-IV (Initial Vector) correlation power analysis on the international standard stream cipher KCipher-2 together with an effective countermeasure. First, we describe a power analysis technique which can reveal the secret key (initial key) of KCipher-2 and then evaluate the validity of the CPA with experiments using both FPGA and ASIC implementations of KCipher-2 processors. This paper also proposes a masking-based countermeasure against the CPA. The concept of the proposed countermeasure is to mask intermediate data which pass through the non-linear function part including integer addition, substitution functions, and internal registers L1 and L2. We design two types of masked integer adders and two types of masked substitution circuits in order to minimize circuit area and delay, respectively. The effectiveness of the countermeasure is demonstrated through an experiment on the same FPGA platform. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated through the ASIC fabricated by TSMC 65nm CMOS process technology. In comparison with the conventional design, the design with the countermeasure can be achieved by the area increase of 1.6 times at most.

KCipher-2 is a word-oriented stream cipher and an ISO/IEC 18033 standard. It is listed as a CRYPTREC cryptographic algorithm for Japanese governmental use. It consists of two feedback shift registers and a non-linear function. The size of each register in KCipher-2 is 32 bits and the non-linear function mainly applies 32-bit operations. Therefore, it can be efficiently implemented as software. SNOW-family stream ciphers are also word-oriented stream ciphers, and their high performance has already been demonstrated.We propose optimised implementations of KCipher-2 and compare their performance to that of the SNOW-family and other eSTREAM portfolios. The fastest algorithm is SNOW 2.0 and KCipher-2 is the second fastest despite the complicated irregular clocking mechanism. However, KCipher-2 is the fastest of the feasible algorithms, as SNOW 2.0 has been shown to have a security flaw. We also optimise the hardware implementation for the Virtex-5 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and show two implementations. The first implementation is a rather straightforward optimisation and achieves 16,153 Mbps with 732 slices. In the second implementation, we duplicate the non-linear function using the structural advantage of KCipher-2 and we achieve 17,354 Mbps with 813 slices. Our implementation of KCipher-2 is around three times faster than those of the SNOW-family and efficiency, which is evaluated by “Throughput/Area (Mbps/slice)”, is 3.6-times better than that of SNOW 2.0 and 8.5-times better than that of SNOW 3G. These syntheses are performed using Xilinx ISE version 12.4.