Key classification attack on block ciphers

In this paper, security analysis of block ciphers with key length greater than block length is proposed. When key length is significantly greater than block length and the statistical distribution of cipher system is like a uniform distribution, there are more than one key which map fixed input to fixed output. If a block cipher designed sufficiently random, it is expected that the key space can be classified into same classes. Using such classes of keys, our proposed algorithm would be able to recover the key of block cipher with complexity O(max(2^n, 2^{k-n}) where n is block length and k is key length. We applied our algorithm to 2- round KASUMI block cipher as sample block cipher by using weakness of functions that used in KASUMI

Multidimensional Zero-Correlation Linear Cryptanalysis of the Block Cipher KASUMI

The block cipher KASUMI is widely used for security in many synchronous wireless standards. It was proposed by ETSI SAGE for usage in 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) ciphering algorthms in 2001. There are a great deal of cryptanalytic results on KASUMI, however, its security evaluation against the recent zero-correlation linear attacks is still lacking so far. In this paper, we select some special input masks to refine the general 5-round zero-correlation linear approximations combining with some observations on the $FL$ functions and then propose the 6-round zero-correlation linear attack on KASUMI. Moreover, zero-correlation linear attacks on the last 7-round KASUMI are also introduced under some weak keys conditions. These weak keys take $2^{-14}$ of the whole key space. The new zero-correlation linear attack on the 6-round needs about $2^{85}$ encryptions with $2^{62.8}$ known plaintexts. For the attack under weak keys conditions on the last 7 round, the data complexity is about $2^{62.1}$ known plaintexts and the time complexity $2^{110.5}$ encryptions

Performance and Statistical Analysis of Stream ciphers in GSM Communications

For a stream cipher to be secure, the keystream generated by it should be uniformly random with parameter 1/2.Statistical tests check whether the given sequence follow a certain probability distribution. In this paper, we perform a detailed statistical analysis of various stream ciphers used in GSM 2G,3G, 4G and 5G communications. The sequences output by these ciphers are checked for randomness using the statistical tests defined by the NIST Test Suite. It should also be not possible to derive any information about secret key and the initial state ofthe cipher from the keystream. Therefore, additional statistical tests based on properties like Correlation between Keystreamand Key, and Correlation between Keystream and IV are also performed. Performance analysis of the ciphers also has been done and the results tabulated. Almost all the ciphers pass the tests in the NIST test suite with 99% confidence level. For A5/3stream cipher, the correlation between the keystream and key is high and correlation between the keystream and IV is low when compared to other ciphers in the A5 family

Boomerang Connectivity Table Revisited. Application to SKINNY and AES

The boomerang attack is a variant of differential cryptanalysis which regards a block cipher E as the composition of two sub-ciphers, i.e., E = E1 o E0, and which constructs distinguishers for E with probability p2q2 by combining differential trails for E0 and E1 with probability p and q respectively. However, the validity of this attack relies on the dependency between the two differential trails. Murphy has shown cases where probabilities calculated by p2q2 turn out to be zero, while techniques such as boomerang switches proposed by Biryukov and Khovratovich give rise to probabilities greater than p2q2. To formalize such dependency to obtain a more accurate estimation of the probability of the distinguisher, Dunkelman et al. proposed the sandwich framework that regards E as Ẽ1 o Em o Ẽ0, where the dependency between the two differential trails is handled by a careful analysis of the probability of the middle part Em. Recently, Cid et al. proposed the Boomerang Connectivity Table (BCT) which unifies the previous switch techniques and incompatibility together and evaluates the probability of Em theoretically when Em is composed of a single S-box layer. In this paper, we revisit the BCT and propose a generalized framework which is able to identify the actual boundaries of Em which contains dependency of the two differential trails and systematically evaluate the probability of Em with any number of rounds. To demonstrate the power of this new framework, we apply it to two block ciphers SKINNY and AES. In the application to SKINNY, the probabilities of four boomerang distinguishers are re-evaluated. It turns out that Em involves5 or 6 rounds and the probabilities of the full distinguishers are much higher than previously evaluated. In the application to AES, the new framework is used to exclude incompatibility and find high probability distinguishers of AES-128 under the related-subkey setting. As a result, a 6-round distinguisher with probability 2−109.42 is constructed. Lastly, we discuss the relation between the dependency of two differential trails in boomerang distinguishers and the properties of components of the cipher

Differential Fault Attack on KASUMI Cipher Used in GSM Telephony

The confidentiality of GSM cellular telephony depends on the security of A5 family of cryptosystems. As an algorithm in this family survived from cryptanalysis, A5/3 is based on the block cipher KASUMI. This paper describes a novel differential fault attack on KAUSMI with a 64-bit key. Taking advantage of some mathematical observations on the FL, FO functions, and key schedule, only one 16-bit word fault is required to recover all information of the 64-bit key. The time complexity is only 232 encryptions. We have practically simulated the attack on a PC which takes only a few minutes to recover all the key bits. The simulation also experimentally verifies the correctness and complexity

Boomerang Switch in Multiple Rounds. Application to AES Variants and Deoxys

The boomerang attack is a cryptanalysis technique that allows an attacker to concatenate two short differential characteristics. Several research results (ladder switch, S-box switch, sandwich attack, Boomerang Connectivity Table (BCT), ...) showed that the dependency between these two characteristics at the switching round can have a significant impact on the complexity of the attack, or even potentially invalidate it. In this paper, we revisit the issue of boomerang switching effect, and exploit it in the case where multiple rounds are involved. To support our analysis, we propose a tool called Boomerang Difference Table (BDT), which can be seen as an improvement of the BCT and allows a systematic evaluation of the boomerang switch through multiple rounds. In order to illustrate the power of this technique, we propose a new related-key attack on 10-round AES-256 which requires only 2 simple related-keys and 275 computations. This is a much more realistic scenario than the state-of-the-art 10-round AES-256 attacks, where subkey oracles, or several related-keys and high computational power is needed. Furthermore, we also provide improved attacks against full AES-192 and reduced-round Deoxys

Evaluation of mobile network security in Ghana

Applied project submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, April 2015Mobile technology is one of the most successful technologies on the African continent. Personal and professional communication as well as critical services like banking and remittances are widely made through mobile networks and platforms in Ghana. However, little is known about the security of the underlying infrastructure and devices consumers use to interact with the mobile network. The focus of this project is to determine if the core systems of the mobile network operators, the technology infrastructure, and the 2G/3G dongles have exploitable security vulnerabilities, demonstrate some of those exploits, and make recommendations on how to mitigate or eliminate the risk of exploitation.Ashesi University Colleg

The LED Block Cipher

Abstract. We present a new block cipher LED. While dedicated to compact hardware implementation, and offering the smallest silicon footprint among comparable block ciphers, the cipher has been designed to simultaneously tackle three additional goals. First, we explore the role of an ultra-light (in fact non-existent) key schedule. Second, we consider the resistance of ciphers, and LED in particular, to related-key attacks: we are able to derive simple yet interesting AES-like security proofs for LED regarding related- or single-key attacks. And third, while we provide a block cipher that is very compact in hardware, we aim to maintain a reasonable performance profile for software implementation. Key words: lightweight, block cipher, RFID tag, AES.

Boomerang Connectivity Table Revisited

The boomerang attack is a variant of differential cryptanalysis which regards a block cipher $E$ as the composition of two sub-ciphers, i.e., $E=E_1\circ E_0$, and which constructs distinguishers for $E$ with probability $p^2q^2$ by combining differential trails for $E_0$ and $E_1$ with probability $p$ and $q$ respectively. However, the validity of this attack relies on the dependency between the two differential trails. Murphy has shown cases where probabilities calculated by $p^2q^2$ turn out to be zero, while techniques such as boomerang switches proposed by Biryukov and Khovratovich give rise to probabilities greater than $p^2q^2$. To formalize such dependency to obtain a more accurate estimation of the probability of the distinguisher, Dunkelman et al. proposed the sandwich framework that regards $E$ as $\tilde{E_1}\circ E_m \circ \tilde{E_0}$, where the dependency between the two differential trails is handled by a careful analysis of the probability of the middle part $E_m$. Recently, Cid et al. proposed the Boomerang Connectivity Table (BCT) which unifies the previous switch techniques and incompatibility together and evaluates the probability of $E_m$ theoretically when $E_m$ is composed of a single S-box layer. In this paper, we revisit the BCT and propose a generalized framework which is able to identify the actual boundaries of $E_m$ which contains dependency of the two differential trails and systematically evaluate the probability of $E_m$ with any number of rounds. To demonstrate the power of this new framework, we apply it to two block ciphers SKNNY and AES. In the application to SKNNY, the probabilities of four boomerang distinguishers are re-evaluated. It turns out that $E_m$ involves 5 or 6 rounds and the probabilities of the full distinguishers are much higher than previously evaluated. In the application to AES, the new framework is used to exclude incompatibility and find high probability distinguishers of AES-128 under the related-subkey setting. As a result, a 6-round distinguisher with probability $2^{-109.42}$ is constructed. Lastly, we discuss the relation between the dependency of two differential trails in boomerang distinguishers and the properties of components of the cipher

Improved Rectangle Attacks on SKINNY and CRAFT

The boomerang and rectangle attacks are adaptions of differential cryptanalysis that regard the target cipher E as a composition of two sub-ciphers, i.e., E = E1 ∘ E0, to construct a distinguisher for E with probability p2q2 by concatenating two short differential trails for E0 and E1 with probability p and q respectively. According to the previous research, the dependency between these two differential characteristics has a great impact on the probability of boomerang and rectangle distinguishers. Dunkelman et al. proposed the sandwich attack to formalise such dependency that regards E as three parts, i.e., E = E1 ∘ Em ∘ E0, where Em contains the dependency between two differential trails, satisfying some differential propagation with probability r. Accordingly, the entire probability is p2q2r. Recently, Song et al. have proposed a general framework to identify the actual boundaries of Em and systematically evaluate the probability of Em with any number of rounds, and applied their method to accurately evaluate the probabilities of the best SKINNY’s boomerang distinguishers. In this paper, using a more advanced method to search for boomerang distinguishers, we show that the best previous boomerang distinguishers for SKINNY can be significantly improved in terms of probability and number of rounds. More precisely, we propose related-tweakey boomerang distinguishers for up to 19, 21, 23, and 25 rounds of SKINNY-64-128, SKINNY-128-256, SKINNY-64-192 and SKINNY-128-384 respectively, which improve the previous boomerang distinguishers of these variants of SKINNY by 1, 2, 1, and 1 round respectively. Based on the improved boomerang distinguishers for SKINNY, we provide related-tweakey rectangle attacks on 23 rounds of SKINNY-64-128, 24 rounds of SKINNY-128-256, 29 rounds of SKINNY-64-192, and 30 rounds of SKINNY-128-384. It is worth noting that our improved related-tweakey rectangle attacks on SKINNY-64-192, SKINNY-128-256 and SKINNY-128-384 can be directly applied for the same number of rounds of ForkSkinny-64-192, ForkSkinny-128-256 and ForkSkinny-128-384 respectively. CRAFT is another SKINNY-like tweakable block cipher for which we provide the security analysis against rectangle attack for the first time. As a result, we provide a 14-round boomerang distinguisher for CRAFT in the single-tweak model based on which we propose a single-tweak rectangle attack on 18 rounds of this cipher. Moreover, following the previous research regarding the evaluation of switching in multiple rounds of boomerang distinguishers, we also introduce new tools called Double Boomerang Connectivity Table (DBCT), LBCT⫤, and UBCT⊨ to evaluate the boomerang switch through the multiple rounds more accurately