arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Shujun Li.
A large number of analog chaos-based secure communication systems have been proposed since the early 1990s exploiting the technique of chaos synchronization. A brief survey of these chaos-based cryptosystems and of related cryptanalytic results is given. Some recently proposed countermeasures against known attacks are also introduced.
This paper analyzes the security of a recently-proposed signal encryption scheme based on a filter bank. A very critical weakness of this new signal encryption procedure is exploited in order to successfully recover the associated secret key.
Chaotic systems have been broadly exploited through the last two decades to build encryption methods. Recently, two new image encryption schemes have been proposed, where the encryption process involves a permutation operation and an XOR-like transformation of the shuffled pixels, which are controlled by three chaotic systems. This paper discusses some defects of the schemes and how to break them with a chosen-plaintext attack.
This paper studies the security of a recently-proposed MPEG-video encryption scheme based on secret Huffman tables. Our cryptanalysis shows that: 1) the key space of the encryption scheme is not sufficiently large against divide-and-conquer (DAC) attack and known-plaintext attack; 2) it is possible to decrypt a cipher-video with a partially-known key, thus dramatically reducing the complexity of the DAC brute-force attack in some cases; 3) its security against the chosen-plaintext attack is very weak. Some experimental results are included to support the cryptanalytic results with a brief discuss on how to improve this MPEG-video encryption scheme.
This paper describes how to determine the parameter values of the chaotic Lorenz system used in a two-channel cryptosystem. The geometrical properties of the Lorenz system are used firstly to reduce the parameter search space, then the parameters are exactly determined, directly from the ciphertext, through the minimization of the average jamming noise power created by the encryption process.
Recently two encryption schemes were proposed by combining circular bit shift and XOR operations, under the control of a pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS) generated from a chaotic system. This paper studies the security of these two encryption schemes and reports the following findings: 1) there exist some security defects in both schemes; 2) the underlying chaotic PRBS can be reconstructed as an equivalent key by using only two chosen plaintexts; 3) most elements in the underlying chaotic PRBS can be obtained by a differential known-plaintext attack using only two known plaintexts. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed attack.
In this paper, some existing perceptual encryption algorithms of MPEG videos are reviewed and some problems, especially security defects of two recently proposed MPEG-video perceptual encryption schemes, are pointed out. Then, a simpler and more effective design is suggested, which selectively encrypts fixed-length codewords (FLC) in MPEG-video bitstreams under the control of three perceptibility factors. The proposed design is actually an encryption configuration that can work with any stream cipher or block cipher. Compared with the previously-proposed schemes, the new design provides more useful features, such as strict size-preservation, on-the-fly encryption and multiple perceptibility, which make it possible to support more applications with different requirements. In addition, four different measures are suggested to provide better security against known/chosen-plaintext attacks.
Recently, a new domino signal encryption algorithm (DSEA) was proposed for digital signal transmission, especially for digital images and videos. This paper analyzes the security of DSEA, and points out the following weaknesses: 1) its security against the brute-force attack was overestimated; 2) it is not sufficiently secure against ciphertext-only attacks, and only one ciphertext is enough to get some information about the plaintext and to break the value of a sub-key; 3) it is insecure against known/chosen-plaintext attacks, in the sense that the secret key can be recovered from a number of continuous bytes of only one known/chosen plaintext and the corresponding ciphertext. Experimental results are given to show the performance of the proposed attacks, and some countermeasures are discussed to improve DSEA.
As a powerful cryptanalysis tool, the method of return-map attacks can be used to extract secret messages masked by chaos in secure communication schemes. Recently, a simple defensive mechanism was presented to enhance the security of chaotic parameter modulation schemes against return-map attacks. Two techniques are combined in the proposed defensive mechanism: multistep parameter modulation and alternative driving of two different transmitter variables. This paper re-studies the security of this proposed defensive mechanism against return-map attacks, and points out that the security was much over-estimated in the original publication for both ciphertext-only attack and known/chosen-plaintext attacks. It is found that a deterministic relationship exists between the shape of the return map and the modulated parameter, and that such a relationship can be used to dramatically enhance return-map attacks thereby making them quite easy to break the defensive mechanism.
Recently, Pareek et al. proposed a symmetric key block cipher using multiple one-dimensional chaotic maps. This paper reports some new findings on the security problems of this kind of chaotic cipher: 1) a number of weak keys exists; 2) some important intermediate data of the cipher are not sufficiently random; 3) the whole secret key can be broken by a known-plaintext attack with only 120 consecutive known plain-bytes in one known plaintext. In addition, it is pointed out that an improved version of the chaotic cipher proposed by Wei et al. still suffers from all the same security defects.
Recently Lin et al. proposed a method of using the underdetermined BSS (blind source separation) problem to realize image and speech encryption. In this paper, we give a cryptanalysis of this BSS-based encryption and point out that it is not secure against known/chosen-plaintext attack and chosen-ciphertext attack. In addition, there exist some other security defects: low sensitivity to part of the key and the plaintext, a ciphertext-only differential attack, divide-and-conquer (DAC) attack on part of the key. We also discuss the role of BSS in Lin et al.'s efforts towards cryptographically secure ciphers.
This paper reports security problems with improper implementations of an improved version of FEA-M (fast encryption algorithm for multimedia). It is found that an implementation-dependent differential chosen-plaintext attack or its chosen-ciphertext counterpart can reveal the secret key of the cryptosystem, if the involved (pseudo-)random process can be tampered (for example, through a public time service). The implementation-dependent differential attack is very efficient in complexity and needs only $O(n^2)$ chosen plaintext or ciphertext bits. In addition, this paper also points out a minor security problem with the selection of the session key. In real implementations of the cryptosystem, these security problems should be carefully avoided, or the cryptosystem has to be further enhanced to work under such weak implementations.
This paper describes how to determine the parameter values of the chaotic Lorenz system from one of its variables waveform. The geometrical properties of the system are used firstly to reduce the parameter search space. Then, a synchronization-based approach, with the help of the same geometrical properties as coincidence criteria, is implemented to determine the parameter values with the wanted accuracy. The method is not affected by a moderate amount of noise in the waveform. As way of example of its effectiveness, the method is applied to figure out directly from the ciphertext the secret keys of two-channel chaotic cryptosystems using the variable $z$ as a synchronization signal, based on the ultimate state projective chaos synchronization.
This paper focuses on an interesting phenomenon when chaos meets computers. It is found that digital computers are absolutely incapable of showing true long-time dynamics of some chaotic systems, including the tent map, the Bernoulli shift map and their analogues, even in a high-precision floating-point arithmetic. Although the results cannot directly generalized to most chaotic systems, the risk of using digital computers to numerically study continuous dynamical systems is shown clearly. As a result, we reach the old saying that "it is impossible to do everything with computers only".
This paper mainly studies problems about so called "permutation polynomials modulo $m$", polynomials with integer coefficients that can induce bijections over Z_m={0,...,m-1}. The necessary and sufficient conditions of permutation polynomials are given, and the number of all permutation polynomials of given degree and the number induced bijections are estimated. A method is proposed to determine all equivalent polynomials from the induced polynomial function, which can be used to determine all equivalent polynomials that induce a given bijection. A few problems have not been solved yet in this paper and left for open study. Note: After finishing the first draft, we noticed that some results obtained in this paper can be proved in other ways (see Remark 2). In this case, this work gives different and independent proofs of related results.
This paper studies so-called "null polynomials modulo m", i.e., polynomials with integer coefficients that satisfy f(x)=0 (mod m) for any integer x. The study on null polynomials is helpful to reduce congruences of higher degrees modulo m and to enumerate equivalent polynomial functions modulo m, i.e., functions over Z_m={0, ..., m-1} generated by integer polynomials. The most well-known null polynomial is f(x)=x^p-x modulo a prime p. After pointing out that null polynomials modulo a composite can be studied by handling null polynomials modulo each prime power, this paper mainly focuses on null polynomials modulo p^d (d>=1). A typical monic null polynomial of the least degree modulo p^d is given for any value of d>=1, from which one can further enumerate all null polynomials modulo p^d. The most useful result obtained in this paper are Theorem 32 in Sec. 4.4 and its derivative -- Theorem 34 in Sec. 4.5. The results given in Sec. 4.3 form a basis of the induction proofs given in Sec. 4.4. However, if you do not care how the proofs in Sec. 4.4 were established, you can simply skip Sec. 4.3. Theorems 28 and 31 are very important for the proof of Theorem 32 and should be paid more attention. Note: After finishing this draft, we noticed that some results given in this paper have been covered in Kempner's papers [3,4]. Since we use a different way to obtain the results, this work can be considered as an independent and different proof. For a brief introduction to Kempner's proof, see the Appendix of this paper.
This article evaluates the determinants of two classes of special matrices, which are both from a number theory problem. Applications of the evaluated determinants can be found in [arXiv:math.NT/0509523]. Note that the two determinants are actually special cases of Theorems 20 and 23 in [arXiv:math.CO/9902004], respectively. Since this paper does not provide any new results, it will not be published anywhere.
Recently Bu and Wang [Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 19 (2004) 919] proposed a simple modulation method aiming to improve the security of chaos-based secure communications against return-map-based attacks. Soon this modulation method was independently cryptanalyzed by Chee et al. [Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 21 (2004) 1129], Wu et al. [Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 22 (2004) 367], and Álvarez et al. [Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, accepted (2004), arXiv:nlin.CD/0406065] via different attacks. As an enhancement to the Bu-Wang method, an improving scheme was suggested by Wu et al. by removing the relationship between the modulating function and the zero-points. The present paper points out that the improved scheme proposed by Wu et al. is still insecure against a new attack. Compared with the existing attacks, the proposed attack is more powerful and can also break the original Bu-Wang scheme. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the security of the modulation-based schemes is not so satisfactory from a pure cryptographical point of view. The synchronization performance of this class of modulation-based schemes is also discussed.