Feistel cipher implementation in Python for format-preserving encryption
This is a Python library implementing the Feistel cipher for Format-Preserving Encryption (FPE).
The main objective of this library is not to provide a secure encryption scheme but rather a safe obfuscation tool.
This library operates on the concept of the Feistel cipher described in Wikipedia as:
A Feistel network is subdivided into several rounds or steps. In its balanced version, the network processes the data in two parts of identical size. On each round, the two blocks are exchanged, then one of the blocks is combined with a transformed version of the other block. Half of the data is encoded with the key, then the result of this operation is added using an XOR operation to the other half of the data. Then in the next round, we reverse: it is the turn of the last half to be encrypted and then to be xored to the first half, except that we use the data previously encrypted. The diagram below shows the data flow (the
represents the XOR operation). Each round uses an intermediate key, usually taken from the main key via a generation called key schedule. The operations performed during encryption with these intermediate keys are specific to each algorithm.
The algorithmic description (provided by Wikipedia) of the encryption is as follows:
- Let
$n+1$ be the number of steps,$K_{0},K_{1},...,K_{n}$ the keys associated with each step and$F:\Omega\times\mathcal{K}\mapsto\Omega$ a function of the$(words{\times}keys)$ space to the$words$ space. - For each step
$i{\in}[0;n]$ , note the encrypted word in step$i,m_{i}=L_{i}||R_{i}$ :$L_{i+1}=R_{i}$ $R_{i+1}=L_{i}{\oplus}F(L_{i},K_{i})$
-
$m_{0}=L_{0}||R_{0}$ is the unciphered text,$m_{n+1}=L_{n+1}||R_{n+1}$ is the ciphered word.
There is no restriction on the
pip install feistel-py
To get an obfuscated string from a source data using the SHA-256 hashing function at each round, first instantiate a Cipher
object, passing it a key and a number of rounds. Then, use the encrypt()
method with the source data as argument. The result will be a byte array. To ensure maximum security, I recommend you use a 256-bit key or longer and a minimum of 10 rounds.
The decryption process uses the obfuscated buffered data and pass it to the decrypt()
method of the Cipher
.
from feistel import Cipher
source = "my-source-data"
# Encrypt
cipher = Cipher("some-32-byte-long-key-to-be-safe", 10)
obfuscated = cipher.encrypt(source)
# Decrypt
deciphered = cipher.decrypt(obfuscated)
assert deciphered == source, "deciphered should be 'my-source-data'"
NB: This is the exact replica of my other implementations (see below).
You may also use your own set of keys through a CustomCipher
instance, eg.
from feistel import CustomCipher
keys = [
"1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef",
"9876543210fedcba9876543210fedcba9876543210fedcba9876543210fedcba",
"abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789",
]
cipher = CustomCipher(keys)
In that case, the number of rounds depends on the number of provided keys.
Finally, you might want to use the latest cipher, providing true format-preserving encryption for strings:
from feistel import FPECipher, SHA_256
cipher = FPECipher(SHA_256, "some-32-byte-long-key-to-be-safe", 128)
obfuscated = cipher.encrypt(source)
assert len(obfuscated) == len(source)
NB: For stability and security purposes, the number 0
always returns itself.
You might also want to use it with the command line:
usage: python3 -m feistel [-h] [-c CIPHER] [-e ENGINE] [-k KEY] [-r ROUNDS] [-o OPERATION] input
positional arguments:
input The string to obfuscate (watch for quotes)
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c CIPHER, --cipher CIPHER
The type of cipher: feistel [default] | custom | fpe
-e ENGINE, --engine ENGINE
The hashing engine [default sha-256]
-k KEY, --key KEY The key(s) to use
-r ROUNDS, --rounds ROUNDS
The (optional) number of rounds [default 10]
-o OPERATION, --operation OPERATION
The operation to process : cipher | decipher
The following libraries are necessary:
pycryptodome
;py-utls
.
$ git clone https://github.com/cyrildever/feistel-py.git
$ cd feistel-py/
$ pip install -e .
$ python3 -m unittest discover
For those interested, I also made two other implementations of these ciphers:
- In Golang as an executable;
- In Typescript for the browser;
- In Scala for the JVM.
I also created a special library for redacting classified documents using the new FPE cipher. Feel free to contact me about it.
This module is distributed under a MIT license.
See the LICENSE file.
© 2024 Cyril Dever. All rights reserved.