In this paper, we focus on a novel technique called the cube–linear attack, which is formed by combining cube attacks with linear attacks. It is designed to recover the secret information in a probabilistic polynomial and can reduce the data complexity required for a successful attack in specific circumstances. In addition to the different combination strategies of the two attacks, two cube–linear schemes are discussed. Applying our method of a cube–linear attack to a reduced-round Trivium, as an example, we get better linear cryptanalysis results. More importantly, we believe that the improved linear cryptanalysis technique introduced in this paper can be extended to other ciphers.