Episode 20: Cryptanalysis of GPRS: GEA-1 and GEA-2!

A team of cryptanalysits presents the first publicly available
cryptanalytic attacks on the GEA-1 and GEA-2 algorithms. Instead of
providing full 64-bit security, they show that the initial state of
GEA-1 can be recovered from as little as 65 bits of known keystream
(with at least 24 bits coming from one frame) in time 240 GEA-1
evaluations and using 44.5 GiB of memory. The attack on GEA-1 is
based on an exceptional interaction of the deployed LFSRs and the
key initialization, which is highly unlikely to occur by chance.
This unusual pattern indicates that the weakness is intentionally
hidden to limit the security level to 40 bit by design.
Cryptanalysis of the GPRS Encryption Algorithms GEA-1 and GEA-2
(https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/819) Music composed by Toby Fox and
performed by Sean Schafianski
(https://seanschafianski.bandcamp.com/). Special Guests: Gaëtan
Leurent and Håvard Raddum.