Feistel Ciphers: Security Proofs and Cryptanalysis

This book provides a survey on different kinds of Feistel ciphers, with their definitions and mathematical/computational properties. Feistel ciphers are widely used in cryptography in order to obtain pseudorandom permutations and secret-key block ciphers. In Part 1, we describe Feistel ciphers and their variants. We also give a brief story of these ciphers and basic security results. In Part 2, we describe generic attacks on Feistel ciphers. In Part 3, we give results on DES and specific Feistel ciphers. Part 4 is devoted to improved security results. We also give results on indifferentiability and indistinguishability.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of different kinds of Feistel ciphers, including their definition and mathematical/computational properties. Feistel Networks form the base design of the Data Encryption Standard algorithm, a former US NIST standard block cipher, originally released in 1977, and the framework used by several other symmetric ciphers ever since. The results consolidated in this volume provide an overview of this important cipher design to researchers and practitioners willing to understand the design and security analysis of Feistel ciphers.