Cryptography and Cryptanalysis Through Computational Intelligence

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed an increasing interest in the application of Computational Intelligence methods to problems derived from the field of cryptography and cryptanalysis. This phenomenon can be attributed both to the effectiveness of these methods to handle hard problems, and to the major importance of automated techniques in the design and cryptanalysis of cryptosystems. This chapter begins with a brief introduction to cryptography and Computational Intelligence methods. A short survey of the applications of Computational Intelligence to cryptographic problems follows, and our contribution in this field is presented. Specifically, some cryptographic problems are viewed as discrete optimization tasks and Evolutionary Computation methods are utilized to address them. Furthermore, the effectiveness of Artificial Neural Networks to approximate some cryptographic functions is studied. Finally, theoretical issues of Ridge Polynomial Networks and cryptography are presented. The experimental results reported suggest that problem formulation and representation are critical determinants of the performance of Computational Intelligence methods in cryptography. Moreover, since strong cryptosystems should not reveal any patterns of the encrypted messages or their inner structure, it appears that Computational Intelligence methods can constitute a first measure of the cryptosystems’ security.