Timing Attack Prospect for RSA Cryptanalysts Using Genetic Algorithm Technique

Hamza Ali and Mikdam Al-SalamiComputer Science

Department, Zarka Private University, Jordan 

Abstract: This paper presents an approach to cryptanalysis of RSA cryptosystem based on the application of genetic algorithm. The search utilizes the idea of timing attack as computation time information may leak due to different modular operations throughout the RSA encoding. This approach suggests a speed up process, aiming at reducing the required number of plaintext-ciphertext samples needed for a successful timing attack. The proposed notion of timing attack outlined in this work with its preliminary implementation, have given encouraging results on RSA cryptosystem samples. Further work carried on to implement the idea of genetic algorithm technique to practical RSA system has demonstrated encouraging results. 

Keywords: Cryptography, cryptanalysis, genetic algorithms, timing attacks, RSA, key search. 

 Received February 16, 2003; accepted June 26, 2003