Information Security Applications of Bit-Mixers

A Bit-Mixer is a function of fixed size input and output, which computes uncorrelated output from correlated input values, and its behavior is altered by parameters, called keys. Several bit-mixer constructions have been published with very fast, power efficient implementations in electronic hardware, having very little side channel leakage. In this paper a dozen cryptographic applications are discussed, in most of which the output of the employed bit-mixers are hidden from an adversary. In these cases bit-mixers don’t have to satisfy strict cryptographic requirements, but the security of the applications is improved by reducing exploitable correlations among intermediate values, and by diminishing side channel leakage of electronic implementations. Keywords—Information security, cryptography, cryptographic hardware, electronics, side channel analysis, side channel attack