On the security of multiple Huffman table based encryption

Recently, an encryption algorithm using multiple Huffman tables was proposed to protect multimedia content. Since the encryption operation can be efficiently implemented, its speed is several times faster than AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) or any known stream ciphers. In this paper, the security of this algorithm will be analyzed in detail. It is shown that the key is recovered with one ciphertext and the corresponding plaintext consisting of about 10 blocks of symbols by known-plaintext attack or with thousands of ciphertexts by ciphertext-only attack.

Research highlights► Present three observations about the weaknesses of the original algorithm. ► Present a known-plaintext attack based on these observations. ► Present a ciphertext-only attack based on another observation.