English

The block cipher NSABC (public domain)

Cryptography and Security 2011-05-18 v1

Abstract

We introduce NSABC/w -- Nice-Structured Algebraic Block Cipher using w-bit word arithmetic, a 4w-bit analogous of Skipjack [NSA98] with 5w-bit key. The Skipjack's internal 4-round Feistel structure is replaced with a w-bit, 2-round cascade of a binary operation (x,z)\mapsto(x\boxdot z)\lll(w/2) that permutes a text word x under control of a key word z. The operation \boxdot, similarly to the multiplication in IDEA [LM91, LMM91], bases on an algebraic group over w-bit words, so it is also capable of decrypting by means of the inverse element of z in the group. The cipher utilizes a secret 4w-bit tweak -- an easily changeable parameter with unique value for each block encrypted under the same key [LRW02] -- that is derived from the block index and an additional 4w -bit key. A software implementation for w=64 takes circa 9 clock cycles per byte on x86-64 processors.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.3388,
  title  = {The block cipher NSABC (public domain)},
  author = {Alice Nguyenova-Stepanikova and Tran Ngoc Duong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.3388},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

22 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:08:34.410Z