On the Security of 2-Key Triple DES

DOI10.1109/TIT.2016.2611003zbMATH Open1359.94654arXiv1602.06229OpenAlexW2275760912MaRDI QIDQ2976504FDOQ2976504

Authors: Chris J. Mitchell 

Publication date: 28 April 2017

Published in: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: This paper reconsiders the security offered by 2-key triple DES, an encryption technique that remains widely used despite recently being de-standardised by NIST. A generalisation of the 1990 van Oorschot-Wiener attack is described, constituting the first advance in cryptanalysis of 2-key triple DES since 1990. We give further attack enhancements that together imply that the widely used estimate that 2-key triple DES provides 80 bits of security can no longer be regarded as conservative; the widely stated assertion that the scheme is secure as long as the key is changed regularly is also challenged. The main conclusion is that, whilst not completely broken, the margin of safety for 2-key triple DES is slim, and efforts to replace it, at least with its 3-key variant, should be pursued with some urgency.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.06229

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Authentication, digital signatures and secret sharing (94A62)

Cited In (3)

• On the security of public key cryptosystems with a double decryption mechanism
• The exact multi-user security of 2-key triple DES
• How to Protect DES Against Exhaustive Key Search

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