KISS: A Bit Too Simple

KISS (‘Keep it Simple Stupid’) is an efficient pseudo-random number generator originally specified by G. Marsaglia and A. Zaman in 1993. G. Marsaglia in 1998 posted a C version to various USENET newsgroups, including sci.crypt. Marsaglia himself has never claimed cryptographic security for the KISS generator, but others have made the intellectual leap and claimed that it is of cryptographic quality. In this paper we show a number of reasons why the generator does not meet some of the KISS authors’ claims, why it is not suitable for use as a stream cipher, and that it is not cryptographically secure. Our best attack requires about 70 words of generated output and a few hours of computation to recover the initial state. In early 2011, G. Marsaglia posted a new version of KISS, which falls to a simple divide-and-conquer attack.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: IACR
• Authors: Greg Rose
• Keywords: IACR 2011, Marsaglia, Pseudo Random Number, Random Number Generator