A generalised testbed for analysing block and stream ciphers

With the recent development of a number of new ciphers, especially block ciphers, there is a need for a set of tools to help analyse them, in order to obtain some comparative measure of their relative security, and to assist in identifying any shortcomings in their design. This project uses a number of tests to provide a better determination of a cipher's capabilities than previous attempts, and incorporates them into a framework to aid extension of the testbed, through both the addition of new ciphers, and new tests. The testbed will be used for a comparative analysis of some of the new families of block ciphers, including LOKI, FEAL, Khufu, Khafre, and KSX against the older generation which includes Lucifer and DES. Some preliminary results from this analysis on DES, FEAL, and LOKI are presented here.