SHIPHER: A new family of light-weight block ciphers based on dynamic operators

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a family of block ciphers named SHIPHER. We present a symmetric encryption framework based on a cryptographic hash function and dynamic operators controlled by small random numbers. This dynamic operator mixes operations from different algebraic groups like IDEA [1]. However, unlike IDEA and extended IDEA ([2], [3]), modular addition is the only calculation in this framework and this makes SHIPHER highly efficient. The round function was chosen to provide confusion and diffusion to facilitate hardware implementations. This framework can provide families of secure, flexible, and variable-key-length block ciphers. Anny block size can be achieved. We have extensively investigated our encryption framework. We can easily control the computational cost by selecting block size, implementation method, and a hash function. Also, this framework offers excellent performance and it is flexible and generic enough to admit a variety of implementations on different dynamic operators. In this paper, we provide one implementation, show its performance, and discuss possible extensions of similar dynamic operators.