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Cryptanalysis Using Soft Computing Techniques

Harsh Bhasin*, Asif Hameed Khan

Department of Computer Sc.&Engg, Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi-62, India

Abstract: This paper proposes a Genetic Algorithm (GAs) based cryptanalysis technique. Genetic Algorithms are the optimization techniques which are also known for robustness. The analysis and the involved theory have been presented in the paper. The designing of fitness function has been done using the statistical analysis of a Standard English Language documents. The technique has been verified using 9 text documents of about 4000 words and the results are encouraging. The technique paves way of Soft Computing techniques in Cryptanalysis.

Keywords: Cryptanalysis, Cryptography, Genetic Algorithms (GAs)

Received March 18, 2015; Revised April 03, 2015; Accepted April 16, 2015

Citation: Harsh Bhasin, Asif Hameed Khan, Cryptanalysis Using Soft Computing Techniques. Journal of Computer Sciences and Applications, 3 (2). 52-55. January 2015. doi:10.12691/jcsa-3-2-6

1. Introduction

Cryptanalysis is a procedure of transforming a cipher text into a plaintext. It can also be defined as the study of ciphers, cipher text and cryptosystems [1]. The procedure calls for the retrieval of the plaintext from the cipher text without knowing the cryptographic key or algorithm [1,25]. The traditional cryptanalysis techniques like mono-alphabetic and poly-alphabetic Substitution cipher, Permutation cipher, Transposition cipher, Merkle-Hellman Knapsack cipher, Chor-Rivest Knapsack cipher and Vernam cipher have commonly been used in order to decipher the given cipher text [2]. However, a robust model of accomplishing this task using Genetic Algorithms still eludes the fraternity.

GAs are heuristic search processes based on the concept of survival of the fittest [2]. The algorithms are generally used for optimization problems. Their ability to find the solution using standard operators is remarkable. The algorithms have been successfully used in problems like Travelling Salesman Problem, N- Puzzle etcetera [3-9].

GAs require of setting various algorithm components and parameters for their efficient performance and efficacy [10,11,12,13]. The operators used in GAs are crossover, mutation, selection amongst many others. These operators have been defined in the following sections. The crafting of an appropriate fitness function is the crux of their success. The present work explores the applicability of GAs in the intricate problem of cryptanalysis.

The rest of the paper has been organized as follows. Section 2 presents a brief review of GAs. Section 3 gives a brief overview of related work done on cryptanalysis. Section 4 discusses the Literature review. Section 5 presents the proposed algorithm and section 6 presents the analysis. The last section concludes. The work is sure to pave way of GAs in cryptanalysis.

2. Genetic Algorithm

GAs are inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution [2,14]. According to this theory the best chromosomes, that is those ones having higher values of fitness functions, should survive and create new offspring. GAs constitutes evolutionary computing, which is a rapidly growing area of Artificial Intelligence [2,15]. GAs are heuristic in nature and known for robustness. It gives useful solutions to optimization and search problems [2].

GAs is starts with a set of solutions called population which are represented by chromosomes. The solution from one population are taken and used to form a new population with better fitness. Population is nothing but chromosomes which are generally binary. The population can be refined by using following operators.

Crossover – It is a process of creating a offspring by copying attributes from parent’s chromosomes. Number of crossover depends on crossover rate which is generally 2 to 5%. The formula for the number of crossovers is as follows.

Number of crossover=(No. of cells in chromosomes*No. of chromosomes*crossover rate)/200

There are many types of crossovers. Some of them are as follows.

1) Singe point crossover- In this type, one crossover point is selected. Binary string from the beginning of chromosome to the crossover point is copied from one parent; the rest is copied from the second parent [1].

2) Two point crossover- In this type, the two crossover points are selected and the crossover is implemented by taking some part from the first chromosome, some from the second and the rest from the first [1].

3) Uniform crossover- In this type, the bits are randomly copied from the first or from the second parent [1].

The present work uses single point crossover.

2.1. Mutation

Mutation is a process that is carried out in order to break the local maxima. The process is implemented by flipping a random bit from a random chromosome. The number of mutations is calculated using the following formula. Here, the mutation rate is generally very low. The formula for the number of mutations is as follows.

Number of Mutation=(No. of cells in a chromosomes*No. of chromosomes*mutation rate)/200

2.2. Selection

Selection is a process in which individual chromosomes are chosen so as to form a population for crossover [2]. The chromosomes having higher fitness value will be considered better. There are many methods of performing selection, some of them are Roulette-wheel selection, Stochastic universal selection, Tournament selection, Truncation selection etcetera.

2.3. Population size and Fitness function

Deciding the appropriate size of population has been one of the most contentious points [16,17,18]. The population size should neither nor too small nor too large, Too small size of the population could guide the algorithm to poor solutions [18,19,20]. The numerical experiments show that increasing the size of the population of 5 to 100 significantly improves the resulting value. Taking a large population initially considerably increases the running time.

A fitness function is a type of objective function that is used to summarize, how close a given design solution is achieving the set aims [16]. The designing of an apt fitness function guarantees early convergence. As a matter of fact the designing of an appropriate fitness functions is the most important task in the problem reduction step of the problem.

3. Related Work

Cryptanalysis has been of the most researched topics. The research on this topic has been on rise since its inception. Many techniques have been proposed in order to handle the problem of cryptanalysis. However, the main focus has been on classical ciphers, including substitution, permutation, transposition, knapsack and vernam ciphers.

One of the first papers published was that Spillman, Janssen, Nelson and Kepner in 1993 [23]. The work focused on the cryptanalysis of a simple substitution cipher using a GAs. Another paper published in 1993 by R.A. J. Matthews [24], uses an order-based genetic algorithm to attack a simple transposition cipher. Work by R. Spillman [25], applies a genetic algorithm approach to a Merkle-Hellman knapsack system. It may be stated here that the year-1994 saw a few major papers on the topic one of which was by Andrew Clark [26], includes GAs as one of three optimization algorithms applied to cryptanalysis. In 1995. By Feng-Tse Lin and Cheng-Yan Kao [27] proposed a cipher text only attack on a Vernam cipher. The work by Clark, Dawson and Bergen [28] was an extension of [27]. It contains a detailed analysis of the fitness function used in [25], as well as a modified version of the same fitness function. The paper by Clark, Dawson and Nieuwland [29] is the first to use a parallel GAs for cryptanalysis. The paper published in 1997 by Clark and Dawson [30] is, overall, a slightly more detailed, longer version of [30]. This paper [31], published in 1997, is by Kolodziejczyk. It is an extension of [25], it focuses on the Merkle-Hellman knapsack system, and the effect of initial parameters on the approach reported in [25]. The paper in 1998. By Clark and Dawson, [32] compares three optimization algorithms applied to the cryptanalysis of a simple substitution cipher.

Yaseen and Sahasrabuddhe in 1999 published an important work which proposed a Gas based on the Chor-Rivest public key cryptosystem [33]. In 2002 Grundlingh and Van Vuuren, [34] combines operations research with cryptology and attacks two classical ciphers with a genetic algorithm approach.

It may be stated that the above review was carried out in accordance with the guidelines proposed by Kichenham. The review has deliberately ignored some of the papers published in grey literature. Moreover, the intend of the review was to find the pinioning works in the field, to find gaps in the existing research and to propose a new technique. The goals have largely been accomplished by the above review.

4. Analysis

Figure 1. Analysis and procedure of Genetic Algorithm Based Cryptanalysis

The analysis of the proposed algorithm has been as follows: First of all 16 documents having length greater than equal to 2000 words are selected. These documents were then analyzed for frequency of alphabets and words in a order to generate the first table which contained the information regarding the actual frequency analysis. This table was then compared with another table which contained the standard frequency analysis of alphabets and words in a Standard English documents. This difference was then estimated by calculating the mean deviation and standard deviation of the deviations. This helped in crafting of fitness function which would assign fitness to the chromosomes of a genetic population. If we take only one key for converting plaintext to cipher text, the above analysis would convert the given problem into a optimised search problem. Hence the applicability of GAs can be justified in Cryptanalysis. The steps of the analysis and procedure can be summarized in Figure 1.

5. Proposed Work

The technique employed for the purpose of Cryptanalysis is as follows. First of all, the encrypted text will undergo a frequency analysis in which the frequency of individual token would be valid. These frequencies will be saved in a table. Henceforth, refer to as encrypted frequency table. These frequencies the given an indication of what these tokens could be do. The reason for this is that the encryption has been done of Standard English random text of around 4000 words. The frequency analysis of Standard English language text would be then used to craft the fitness function which is as follows (Refer to the appendix).

The "fitness function" is responsible for performing the evaluation and returning a positive integer number, or "fitness value", that reflects how optimal the solution is: the higher the number, the better the solution.

This is for breaking of token into simpler units. These units would again undergo a frequency analysis which would then map with a Standard English language character (Refer to the appendix).

This Fitness function would be followed by the application standard GAs. It is based on the biological evolution. In this process population is repeatedly modified and in each step the parents produce new population from the previous population which moves towards the optimized solution.

There are three main rules:

a. Selection-Selects the parents

b. Crossover-The crossover rule combines to parents to form children

c. Mutation-Changing an individual parents.

The procedure has been implemented in C#,. NET framework. The work has been then analyzed for verified using 9 text documents of about 4000 words and the results are encouraging

6. Conclusion

This paper presents a noble approach of cryptanalysis using GAs. The work has been implemented and initial results are encouraging. The analysis carried so far gave a appropriate standard deviation and minimum mean deviation. It is intended to extend the work by performing the analysis to a large datasets of around thousands of words. As a matter of fact, ways are being explored to make fitness function adaptive. In a order to do so, various machine learning approaches are applied. The work would pave the way of heuristic search algorithm in cracking keys.

References

Appendix: Frequency of alphabets and works in a Standard English Language Text.

Table 1. Most frequently used words in English Language

The analysis of words in the main entries of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (11th edition revised, 2004) and came up with the following Table 2.

Table 2. The percentage of alphabet usage

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