70 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,

Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

A Modified Feistel Cipher Involving Modular

Arithmetic and Interlacing
V. U. K. Sastry1, D. S. R. Murthy2, S. Durga Bhavani3

Dept. of Computer Science & Engg., SNIST, Hyderabad, India,

1
vuksastry@rediffmail.com

Dept. of Information Technology, SNIST, Hyderabad, India,

2
dsrmurthy.1406@gmail.com

3
School of Information Technology, JNTUH, Hyderabad, India,
sdurga.bhavani@gmail.com

appropriately. At the end of each round of the iteration, the

Abstract: In this paper, we have developed a block cipher with
Feistel structure. In this the plain text is consisting of 256 bits
and the key is containing 128 bits. The process of encryption is
carried out by using modular arithmetic and interlacing the
plain text at various rounds of the iterative process. The
avalanche effect and the cryptanalysis firmly indicate that the
cipher is a strong one and it cannot be broken by any
cryptanalytic attack.
Keywords: Feistel Cipher, Modular arithmetic, Interlacing,
avalanche effect, Cryptanalysis, Encryption and Decryption.
1. Introduction
In a pioneering paper, sometime before the development of
DES [1, 2], Feistel [3, 4] developed a block cipher which
involves an iterative procedure including 16 iterations. In
this, the plain text contains 2w binary bits. The procedure
for encryption is governed by the relations
P0 = w, Q0 = w, (1)
and
Pi = Qi-1,
Qi = Pi-1 ⊕ F(Qi-1, Ki), for i = 1 to 16. (2)
Here, Ki is the key in the ith round of the iterative process
occurring in the analysis; P and Q stand for the left and
right halves of the plain text, and ⊕ denotes the XOR
operation. The process of decryption is governed by the
relations
Qi-1 = Pi,
Pi-1 = Qi ⊕ F(Pi, Ki), for i = 16 to 1, (3)
and the initial conditions are taken from the cipher text
obtained at the end of the encryption.
Though this process involves interchange of modified
text from left to right, operation with the key Ki and a
number of rounds in the iteration process, this cipher was
found to be a weak one and it was broken by several
researchers [5].
In the present paper, our objective is to modify the
Feistel cipher by taking the length of the plain text as 8m
bytes (each byte can be represented by a decimal number
lying in the interval 0 to 255) and operating on each 2m
bytes simultaneously by adopting Feistel approach. A square
key matrix K of size m is associated separately with each 2m
bytes as a multiplicant and mod 256 is applied
resulting binary strings are interlaced in an appropriate
manner. This process is expected to enhance the strength of
the cipher enormously.
In what follows, we mention the plan of the paper. We
discuss the development of the cipher, and design the
algorithms for encryption and decryption in section 2. Then
we illustrate the cipher with an example in section 3. After
that we perform cryptanalysis in section 4. Finally, we
present numerical computations and draw conclusions in
section 5.
2. Development of the cipher
Consider a plaintext P containing 8m characters. On using
EBCDIC code, we have 8m decimal numbers (8m bytes).
This can be divided into four parts wherein each one
contains 2m decimal numbers. Then each substring is
further divided into two parts. Let the left and right parts of
the first substring be denoted as P0 and Q0. In a similar
manner, let the portions of the other substrings be denoted
as R0, S0, T0, U0, and V0, W0 respectively. Here, P0, Q0, …,
W0 are vectors wherein each one is having m components.
Let K be a square key matrix of size m.
In this analysis, following Feistel, the processes of
encryption and decryption can be described by the relations
Pi = Qi-1,
Qi = Pi-1 ⊕ (Qi-1 K) mod 256, for i = 1 to n,
(4)
and
Qi-1 = Pi,
Pi-1 = Qi ⊕ (Pi K) mod 256, for i = n to 1.
(5)
In writing these relations, the function F in (2), is
assumed to be in a particular form.
Similar relations can be written for (Ri, Si), (Ti, Ui), and
(Vi, Wi). At the end of each round, after obtaining all the
eight quantities, Pi, Qi, Ri, Si, Ti, Ui, Vi, and Wi, the binary
bits of all the strings can be interlaced (by a procedure
which is described later) and hence the new Pi, Qi, …, Wi
can be obtained.
The flow charts concerned to encryption and decryption
are presented in Fig. 1.
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 71
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

Figure 1. Schematic Digram of the Cipher

Let us now describe the process of interlacing. As we

have m decimal numbers in each part, Pi, Qi, …, Wi, we can
represent them in the form of a matrix, containing binary
bits, as shown below.

(11)
This completes the process of interlacing.
It may be noted here that inverse interlacing is a reverse
(6)
process to interlacing.
In the process of interlacing, we associate the binary
In what follows, we present the algorithms for
bits given above, in a column wise manner. Thus we get the
encryption, and decryption.
new Pi as the first m columns of the matrix in (6), the new
Qi as the next m columns of the matrix in (6), and so on. For Algorithm for Encryption
example,
(7)
In a similar manner, we can obtain Qi to Wi.
Let us illustrate the above process by considering a simple
example. Let

(8)
This can be written in the binary form as shown below.

(9) Algorithm for Decryption

Now on interlacing, we get the new Pi to Wi as follows.

(10)
Here, the first row contains the first four columns of (9),
the second row contains the next four columns of (9) and so
on. Thus we get
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3. Illustration of the cipher
Consider the plain text given below.
“Dear brother! I have passed my B. Tech (ECE) with
distinction. All this is due to the scholarship sanctioned by
our Government. Now I want to enter into politics”
(12)
Let us focus our attention on the first 32 characters.
This is given by
“Dear brother! I have passed my B” (13)
On using EBCDIC code, (13) can be written in the form
(14)
Let us consider a square key matrix K of size 4. We
have
(15)
On using (14) and (15) and applying the encryption
algorithm, given in section 2, with n = 16, we get the cipher
text C in the form
(16)
On applying the decryption algorithm (See Section 2),
we get back the original plain text given by (13).
Now, let us study the avalanche effect for determining
the strength of the algorithm. Let us change the 24th
character ‘s’ to ‘t’ in (13). Due to this, 162 in (14) becomes
163 and hence, the P0 undergoes a change of 1 binary bit.
Thus the entire plain text comprising P0 to W0 also
undergoes a change of 1 binary bit. Now, on applying the
encryption algorithm on the modified plain text, we get
(17)
On comparing the cipher texts given by (16) and (17),
after converting them into binary form, we find that they
differ by 130 bits. As a change of 1 bit in the plain text is
leading to a change of 130 bits (out of 256 bits) in the cipher
texts, we notice that the cipher is a strong one.
Now let us consider the effect of changing the key by
one binary bit. This can be done by replacing 126 (the 2nd
row 2nd column element of the key) by 127. Now on
applying the process of encryption on the original plain text
(14), we get the new C given by
(18)
On comparing the cipher text C given in (16) and (18),
we notice that they differ by 138 bits (out of 256 bits). This
also shows that the cipher is a strong one.
4. Cryptanalysis
In the study of cryptography [6] the well known methods for
cryptanalysis are:
1. Cipher text only (brute-force) attack
2. Known Plain text attack
3. Chosen Plain text attack
4. Chosen Cipher text attack
In all these attacks, it is assumed that the encryption
algorithm and the cipher text are known to the attacker.
In the brute-force attack, as the key is containing 128
binary bits, the size of the key space is
2128 = (210)12.8 ≈ 1038.4
(IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010
If we assume that the process of encryption with each
key requires 10–7 seconds, then the time required for the
computation with all possible keys is equal to
As this process of computation is taking a very long
time, the brute-force attack is totally impossible.
Let us now study the known plain text attack. In this
case, we are having as many plain text and cipher text pairs
as we require. Here, in carrying out the encryption process,
as the m decimal numbers in each of the 2m decimal
numbers are multiplied by the key and as the portions of the
modified plain text are interlaced at the end of each round of
the iteration process, the key K cannot be determined by any
means.
In the last two cases, that is, in the chosen plain text
attack and in the chosen cipher text attack, intuitively no
special choice appears as a possible one, as the process of
encryption is a complex one.
In the light of the above analysis, we conclude that the
cipher cannot be broken by any attack.
5. Computations and Conclusions
In this paper, we have developed a block cipher by using a
Feistel structure. In this, we have taken a plain text of length
256 binary bits and made use of a key K containing 128 bits.
The programs for encryption and decryption are written in C
language.
On adopting the procedure discussed in section 3, the
cipher text corresponding to the rest of the plain text (which
can be divided into four parts) can be obtained as
The avalanche effect mentioned in section 3 and the
cryptanalysis discussed in section 4, clearly indicate that the
cipher is a strong one, and it cannot be broken by any
cryptanalytic attack.
References
[1] William Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security,
Principles and Practice, Third Edition, Pearson, 2003.
[2] Schaefer, E., “A Simplified Data Encryption Standard
Algorithm”, Cryptologia, Jan 1996.
[3] H. Feistel, “Cryptography and Computer Privacy”,
Scientific American, May 1973.
[4] Feistel, H., Notz, W., and Smith, J., “Some
Cryptographic Techniques for Machine-to-Machine
Data Communications”, Proceedings of the IEEE, Nov.
1975.
[5] R. C. W. Phan, and Mohammed Umar Siddiqi, “A
Framework for Describing Block Cipher
Cryptanalysis”, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol.
55, No. 11, pp. 1402 – 1409, Nov. 2006.
[6] D Denning, “Cryptography and Data Security”,
Addison-Wesley, 1982.