This article presents the author's own metaheuristic cryptanalytic attack based on the use of differential cryptanalysis (DC) methods and memetic algorithms (MA) that improve the local search process through simulated annealing (SA). The suggested attack will be verified on a set of ciphertexts generated with the well-known DES (data encryption standard) reduced to six rounds. The aim of the attack is to guess the last encryption subkey, for each of the two characteristics Ω. Knowing the last subkey, it is possible to recreate the complete encryption key and thus decrypt the cryptogram. The suggested approach makes it possible to automatically reject solutions (keys) that represent the worst fitness function, owing to which we are able to significantly reduce the attack search space. The memetic algorithm (MASA) created in such a way will be compared with other metaheuristic techniques suggested in literature, in particular, with the genetic algorithm (NGA) and the classical differential cryptanalysis attack, in terms of consumption of memory and time needed to guess the key. The article also investigated the entropy of MASA and NGA attacks.
Keywords: DES; differential cryptanalysis; memetic algorithms; metaheuristics; simulated annealing; symmetric block ciphers.