An Efficient Stream Cipher Alpha1 for Mobile and Wireless Devices

Komninos, N and Honary, Bahram and Darnell, Michael (2001) An Efficient Stream Cipher Alpha1 for Mobile and Wireless Devices. In: Cryptography and Coding : 8th IMA International Conference Cirencester, UK, December 17–19, 2001 Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Springer, Berlin, pp. 294-300. ISBN 3-540-43026-1

Abstract

Encryption in wireless networks is essential to protect sensitive information and to prevent fraud. Furthermore, wireless devices, such as palmtops, bluetooth devices, and mobiles phones require an efficient encryption algorithm which is secure and small, fast and simple to implement. There are several stream ciphers available with the best known being A5/1 used in GSM and RC4 used in 802.11 standards. However, these stream ciphers are weak against cryptographic attacks [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. In this paper, a new synchronous stream cipher (Alpha1) is proposed. Alpha1 is robust against these attacks, small, fast and very simple to implement in small wireless devices with low processing power and size (i.e. bluetooth, mobile phones, access points etc.).