Introduction to the applications of evolutionary computation in computer security and cryptography

Techniques taken from the field of Artificial Intelligence, especially Evolutionary Computation (Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming, but also others) are steadily becoming more and more present in the area of computer security, both in network/host security and in the very demanding area of cryptology. In recent years, many algorithms that take advantage of approaches based on Evolutionary Computation have been proposed, for example, in the design and analysis of a number of new cryptographic primitives, ranging from pseudo-random number generators to block ciphers, in the cryptanalysis of state-of-the-art cryptosystems, and in the detection of network attacking patterns, to name a few. There is a growing interest from the computer security community toward Evolutionary Computation techniques, as a result of these recent successes, but there still are a number of open problems in the field that should be addressed.