Local inversion of maps: A new attack on Symmetric encryption, RSA and ECDLP

Abstract: This paper presents algorithms for local inversion of maps and shows how several important computational problems such as cryptanalysis of symmetric encryption algorithms, RSA algorithm and solving the elliptic curve discrete log problem (ECDLP) can be addressed as local inversion problems. The methodology is termed as the \emph{Local Inversion Attack}. It utilizes the concept of \emph{Linear Complexity} (LC) of a recurrence sequence generated by the map defined by the cryptanalysis problem and the given data. It is shown that when the LC of the recurrence is bounded by a bound of polynomial order in the bit length of the input to the map, the local inversion can be accomplished in polynomial time. Hence an incomplete local inversion algorithm which searches a solution within a specified bound on computation can estimate the density of weak cases of cryptanalysis defined by such data causing low LC. Such cases can happen accidentally but cannot be avoided in practice and are fatal insecurity flaws of cryptographic primitives which are wrongly assumed to be secure on the basis of exponential average case complexity. An incomplete algorithm is proposed for solving problems such as key recovery of symmetric encryption algorithms, decryption of RSA ciphertext without factoring the modulus, decrypting any ciphertext of RSA given one plaintext ciphertext pair created with same public key in chosen ciphertext attack and solving the discrete logarithm on elliptic curves over finite fields (ECDLP) as local inversion problems. It is shown that when the LCs of the respective recurrences for given data are small, solutions of these problems are possible in practically feasible time and memory resources.