Abstract:
Cryptanalysis of symmetric and asymmetric ciphers 
is computationally extremely demanding. Since the 
security parameters of almost all practical crypto 
algorithms are chosen such that attacks with 
conventional computers are computationally infeasible, 
the only promising way to tackle existing ciphers 
(assuming no mathematical breakthrough) is to build 
special-purpose hardware. Dedicating those machines to 
the task of cryptanalysis holds the promise of a 
dramatically improved cost-performance ratio so that 
breaking of commercial ciphers comes within reach.
 
This contribution presents the design and realization 
of the COPACOBANA (Cost-Optimized Parallel Code Breaker) 
machine, which is optimized for running cryptanalytical 
algorithms. The primary design goal was to produce a 
reprogrammable low-cost design which can be realized for 
less than US\$ 10,000, and which is applicable for 
attacking various of today's crypto algorithms. It will 
be shown that the architecture outperforms conventional 
computers by several orders in magnitude. Fully configured, 
COPACOBANA can host 120 low-cost FPGAs. In this 
configuration, the COPACOBANA hardware is able to, e.g., 
perform an exhaustive key search of the Data Encryption 
Standard (DES) at a rate of more than 2^{35} keys per 
second, yielding an average search time of less than 
nine days. For this, we used the high-speed DES engine 
design of the Universite Catholique de Louvain's Crypto 
Group. 

This contribution also describes how COPACOBANA can be 
used, in principle, for attacking elliptic curve and 
factorization-based schemes such as ECC and RSA. 
COPACOBANA is intended to, but not necessarily restricted 
to, solving problems related to cryptanalysis.

BibTeX:
@InProceedings{I-KPPPS06,
  author =	 {S. Kumar and C. Paar and J. Pelzl and G. Pfeiffer
                  and M. Schimmler},
  title =	 "{COPACOBANA - A Cost-Optimized Special-Purpose Hardware
                  for Code-Breaking}",
  booktitle =	 {IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom
                  Computing Machines - FCCM 2006, Napa, California},
  pages =	 {},
  month =	 {April 24-26},
  year =	 {2006},
  note =	 {Poster summary}
}