Iraqi block cipher

In cryptography, the Iraqi block cipher was a block cipher published in C source code form by anonymous FTP upload around July 1999, and widely distributed on Usenet. It is a five round unbalanced Feistel cipher operating on a 256 bit block with a 160 bit key.

A comment suggests that it is of Iraqi origin. However, like the S-1 block cipher, it is generally regarded as a hoax, although of lesser quality than S-1. Although the comment suggests that it is Iraqi in origin, all comments, variable and function names and printed strings are in English rather than Arabic; the code is fairly inefficient (including some pointless operations), and the cipher's security may be flawed (no proof).

Because it has a constant key schedule the cipher is vulnerable to a slide attack. However, it may take 2⁶⁴ chosen texts to create a single slid pair, which would make the attack unfeasible. It also has a large number of fixed points, although that is not necessarily a problem, except possibly for hashing modes. No public attack is currently available. As with S-1, it was David Wagner who first spotted the security flaws.

External links

• Source code for the cipher
• File encryption with IBC in ECB and CBC Mode