On effectiveness of clock control in stream ciphers

In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of clock control in protecting stream ciphers from a distinguishing attack, and show that this form of control is effective against such attacks. We model two typical clock-controlled stream ciphers and analyze the increase in computational complexity for these attacks due to clock control. We then analyze parameters for the design of clock-controlled stream ciphers, such as the length of the LFSR used for clock control. By adopting the design criteria described in this paper, a designer can find the optimal length of the clock-control sequence LFSR.