Practical construction of ring LFSRs and ring FCSRs with low diffusion delay for hardware cryptographic applications (Q517716)

The article proposes a method for building LFSR (Linear Feedback Shift Register) and FCSR (Feedback with Carry Shift Register) used in cryptographic applications, with higher performance criteria. The authors use a small generalized definition -- Ring LFSR and Ring FCSR -- and improve the diffusion delay (that is the diameter of the digraph which defines the shift register), from exactly \(n-1\) in [\textit{F. Arnault} et al., Cryptogr. Commun. 3, No. 2, 109--139 (2011; Zbl 1251.94019)], to maximum \(\lceil\sqrt{n}\rceil+6\), where \(n\) is the size (number of flip-flops) of these registers. The construction of the presented FCSR Ring can resist -- using an adequate nonlinear choice of the feedback function -- to the usual attack against stream ciphers (\textit{LFSRization}). Section 3.3 presents some interesting examples for improving the stream ciphers F-FCSR-H v3 (diffusion delay is reduced from 27 to 16) and F-FCSR-16 v3 (diffusion delay reduced from 27 to 19) respectively.