Year: 2002
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Cryptology is a thriving research area of great practical importance. It is a fundamental building block of communications security. Metaheuristic optimisation techniques such as simulated annealing and genetic algorithms have found successful application in a huge number of fields. However, their application to leading edge industrial-strength cryptology has been slight. The power of metaheuristic search is, however, greatly under-estimated. The research reported here shows how a range of modern-day cryptological problems can be attacked successfully using metaheuristic search. Along the way, the work provides the cryptological researcher with many new approaches to applying metaheuristic search techniques. i Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Dr Jeremy Jacob for his support and encouragement to complete this thesis and to the Department of Computer Science for the sabbatical during which much of the groundwork was laid. I should like to thank Professor Colin Runciman for advice given in his role as assessor; this had a significant impact on my actually completing a thesis. I should like to thank: Dr Subhamoy Maitra for providing advice on correlation immune functions (and change of basis in particular); Dr William Millan for information on best achieved correlation immunity results to date, for providing fast ANF code and for alerting me to leading-edge literature on Boolean functions (and indeed for carrying out much of the work that interested me in this field in the first place); and DERA for sponsoring work that led to the heuristic evolution of security protocols. Thanks must also go to IBM Hursley, DERA, the UK Civil Service, the EPSRC's SEMINAL network and the Security Research Centre in Brisbane for invitations to speak on cryptology and metaheu...
Author: John A. Clark
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1585698515