Identification of encryption algorithm using decision tree

Abstract

The task of identification of encryption algorithm from cipher text alone is considered to be a challenging one. Very few works have been done in this area by considering block ciphers or symmetric key ciphers. In this paper, we propose an approach for identification of encryption algorithm for various ciphers using the decision tree generated by C4.5 algorithm. A system which extracts eight features from a cipher text and classifies the encryption algorithm using the C4.5 classifier is developed. Success rate of this proposed method is in the range of 70 to 75 percentages. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.