Advanced slide attacks revisited: Realigning slide on DES

Abstract

Slide attacks are powerful tools that enable the cryptanalyst to break ciphers with up to 4-round self-similarity. This paper introduces an advanced sliding technique that breaks ciphers with self-similarity more than 4 rounds, and even allows for sliding encryptions with dissimilar rounds in the middle of the slide. In particular, we present the realigning slide attack on variants of 14-, 15- and full 16-round DES. We hope our results will spur more effort into ways to extend the slide attacks to apply to larger classes of block ciphers with complex key schedules. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.