Using Linear Hybrid Cellular Automata to Attack the Shrinking Generator

SUMMARY The aim of this research is the efficient cryptanalysis of the Shrinking Generator through its characterization by means of Linear Hybrid Cellular Automata. This paper describes a new known-plaintext attack based on the computation of the characteristic polynomials of sub-automata and on the generation of the Galois field associated to one of the Linear Feedback Shift Registers components of the generator. The proposed algorithm allows predicting with absolute certainty, many unseen bits of the keystream sequence, thanks to the knowledge of both registers lengths, the characteristic polynomial of one of the registers, and the interception of a variable number of keystream bits.