A Pattern Recognition Approach to Block Cipher Identification

With the advent of high speed network technologies, large amount of sensitive data is being transfered over the Internet and other public channels. Faster and larger storage devices have become cheaper. The concern for protection of information is increasing at an alarming rate. Block ciphers are being widely used for secure transmission over the network and also for storing information securely in fixed hard drives and removable drives. New block ciphers are being designed as the existing block ciphers are prone to attack and also to make the encryption process faster than the existing ciphers. Users of block ciphers must be convinced that the block ciphers that they are using are resilient to different kinds of attacks. Hence, a mechanism is required to assess the strength of the block ciphers. Identification attack or distinguishing attack is a cryptanalytic attack that serves as a primary assessment of strength of ciphers. This attack can be applied prior to either the key space reduction or in decryption without the key.