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Preview of New Block Cipher
flaws writes "Secure Science Corp. is offering a preview of one of the 3 ciphers they will be publishing througout the year. The CS2-128 cipher is a 128-bit block cipher with a 128 bit key. This cipher is proposed as a hardware alternative to AES, being that it is more efficient in hardware, simpler to implement, and comparably secure to AES-128.
The preview of the CS2-128 cipher proposed is in html form and will be available in a published format at the end of April. At this time, requests are made for casual peer review and implementation. Secure Science will be offering a challenge at the end of April, introducing the cipher to the public. This ciphers implementation and usage will be offered in multiple hardware devices, such as wireless routers, cell-phones, and storage management hardware."
I read the paper. They devote, oh, a page or so to attacks. Proven as secure as AES? bah.
Immunity in this case meaning that the work factor for mounting the attack is greater or equal to the work factor for brute-forcing the key. If brute-forcing the key costs 2**128 operations, and differential costs 2**129, for example, then you'd be crazy to attempt differential cryptanalysis, when bruting the key is cheaper. I admit to not having RTFP, so I can't evaluate their claim of immunity to DC and LC, but modern ciphers are deliberately designed to be resistant to attack via DC and LC.
No. Encryption algorithms are supposed to act as one way functions when you don't have the key. If this algorithm is properly implemented (but nothing ever really is), no intrinic property of the algorithm would speed up the cracking process. Going backwards (decryption) *with* a key is faster, but going backwards without a key (cracking) is totally different.
1) No - it is open source and technically public domain. 2) That is what we are attempting now - the preview is to get it lined up with crypto experts to review. 3) If it gets past 2, then that is something to consider.
adequacy.org is one of those sites that started out as a parody site, and then everyone seemed to forget what the site was really about. Some of the newer posts there (there aren't many, note that the "computer hacker" article you linked is one of the oldest yet still on the front page) are truly scary in their seriousness. I think even Landover Baptist manages to not take itself as seriously as some of adequacy's posters do.