cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

, SC2000 is a

block cipher In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called ''blocks''. Block ciphers are specified cryptographic primitive, elementary components in the design of many cryptographic protocols and ...

invented by a research group at

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

Labs. It was submitted to the

NESSIE NESSIE (New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity and Encryption) was a European research project funded from 2000 to 2003 to identify secure cryptographic primitives. The project was comparable to the NIST AES process and the Japanese Gov ...

project, but was not selected. It was among the cryptographic techniques recommended for Japanese government use by

CRYPTREC CRYPTREC is the Cryptography Research and Evaluation Committees set up by the Japanese Government to evaluate and recommend cryptographic techniques for government and industrial use. It is comparable in many respects to the European Union's NESSIE ...

in 2003, however, has been dropped to "candidate" by CRYPTREC revision in 2013. The algorithm uses a key size of 128, 192, or 256 bits. It operates on blocks of 128 bits using 6.5 or 7.5 rounds of encryption. Each round consists of

S-box In cryptography, an S-box (substitution-box) is a basic component of symmetric key algorithms which performs substitution. In block ciphers, they are typically used to obscure the relationship between the key and the ciphertext, thus ensuring Sha ...

lookups, key additions, and an unkeyed two-round

Feistel network In cryptography, a Feistel cipher (also known as Luby–Rackoff block cipher) is a symmetric structure used in the construction of block ciphers, named after the German-born physicist and cryptographer Horst Feistel, who did pioneering research whi ...

. There are 3 S-boxes: a 4×4-bit one used at the beginning of each round, and a 5×5-bit one and 6×6-bit one used in the Feistel network. No

analysis Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (38 ...

of the full SC2000 has been announced, but a reduced version of 4.5 rounds is susceptible to

linear cryptanalysis In cryptography, linear cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis based on finding affine approximations to the action of a cipher. Attacks have been developed for block ciphers and stream ciphers. Linear cryptanalysis is one of the two most ...

, and a reduced version of 5 rounds is susceptible to

differential cryptanalysis Differential cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis applicable primarily to block ciphers, but also to stream ciphers and cryptographic hash functions. In the broadest sense, it is the study of how differences in information input can aff ...

. In 2014

Alex Biryukov Alex Biryukov is a cryptographer, currently a full professor at the University of Luxembourg. His notable work includes the design of the stream cipher LEX, as well as the cryptanalysis of numerous cryptographic primitives. In 1998, he developed imp ...

and Ivica Nikolić found a weakness in the

key schedule In cryptography, the so-called product ciphers are a certain kind of cipher, where the (de-)ciphering of data is typically done as an iteration of ''rounds''. The setup for each round is generally the same, except for round-specific fixed valu ...

of SC2000 which allows an attacker to find colliding keys which result in identical encryptions in just 2³⁹ time for 256 bit keys. They proved that there are 2⁶⁸ colliding key pairs and the whole set can be found in 2⁵⁸ time.

References

External links

256bit Ciphers - SC2000 Reference implementation and derived code
Block ciphers {{crypto-stub