Alternating step generator using FCSR and LFSRs: A new stream cipher

Abstract

Data encryption play major role in all communications via internet, wireless and wired media. Stream ciphers are used for data encryption due to their low error propagation. This paper presents a new design of stream cipher for generating pseudorandom keystream with two LFSR's, one FCSR and a non-linear combiner function, which is a bit oriented based on alternating step generator (ASGF). In our design two LFSR's are controlled by the FCSR . ASGF has two stages one is initialization and the other is key stream generation. We performed NIST test suite for checking randomness on the keystream of length 1500000 generated by our design with 99% confidence level. Keystream of ASGF passes almost all NIST tests for randomness and the results are tabulated. For fixed extreme patterns of key and IV, ASGF is giving random sequence. Throughput of our proposed stream cipher ASGF is 4364 cycles/byte. Throughput comparison of ASGF with existing stream ciphers A5/1, A5/2 and RC4 are presented. It is not possible to mount brute force attack on ASGF due to large key space 2192. Security analysis of ASGF against exhaustive search, Algebraic attack, distinguishing attack is also presented in this paper.