Cryptanalysis of symmetric key primitives

Block ciphers and stream ciphers are essential building blocks that are used to construct computing systems which have to satisfy several security objectives. Since the security of these systems depends on the security of its parts, the analysis of these symmetric key primitives has been a goal of critical importance. In this thesis we provide cryptanalytic results for some recently proposed block and stream ciphers. First, we consider two light-weight block ciphers, TREYFER and PIFEA-M. While TREYFER was designed to be very compact in order to fit into constrained environments such as smart cards and RFIDs, PIFEA-M was designed to be very fast in order to be used for the encryption of multimedia data. We provide a related-key attack on TREYFER which recovers the secret key given around 2 11 encryptions and negligible computational effort. As for PIFEA-M, we provide evidence that it does not fulfill its design goal, which was to defend from certain implementation dependant differential attacks possible on previous versions of the cipher. Next. we consider the NGG stream cipher, whose design is based on RC4 and aims to increase throughput by operating with 32-bit or 64-bit values instead of with 8-bit values. We provide a distinguishing attack on NGG which requires just one keystream word. We also show that the first few kilobytes of the keystream may leak information about the secret key which allows the cryptanalyst to recover the secret key in an efficient way. Finally, we consider GGHN, another RC4-like cipher that operates with 32-bit words. We assess different variants of GGHN-Iike algorithms with respect to weak states, in which all internal state words and output elements are even. Once GGHN is absorbed in such a weak state, the least significant bit of the plaintext words will be revealed only by looking at the ciphertext. By modelling the algorithm by a Markov chain and calculating the chain absorption time, we show that the average number of steps required by these algorithms to enter this weak state can be lower than expected at first glance and hence caution should be exercised when estimating this numbe

Security primitives for ultra-low power sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks

The concept of wireless sensor network (WSN) is where tiny devices (sensor nodes), positioned fairly close to each other, are used for sensing and gathering data from its environment and exchange information through wireless connections between these nodes (e.g. sensor nodes distributed through out a bridge for monitoring the mechanical stress level of the bridge continuously). In order to easily deploy a relatively large quantity of sensor nodes, the sensor nodes are typically designed for low price and small size, thereby causing them to have very limited resources available (e.g. energy, processing power). Over the years, different security (cryptographic) primitives have been proposed and refined aiming at utilizing modern processor’s power e.g. 32-bit or 64-bit operation, architecture such as MMX (Multi Media Extension) and etc. In other words, security primitives have targeted at high-end systems (e.g. desktop or server) in software implementations. Some hardware-oriented security primitives have also been proposed. However, most of them have been designed aiming only at large message and high speed hashing, with no power consumption or other resources (such as memory space) taken into considerations. As a result, security mechanisms for ultra-low power (<500µW) devices such as the wireless sensor nodes must be carefully selected or designed with their limited resources in mind. The objective of this project is to provide implementations of security primitives (i.e. encryption and authentication) suitable to the WSN environment, where resources are extremely limited. The goal of the project is to provide an efficient building block on which the design of WSN secure routing protocols can be based on, so it can relieve the protocol designers from having to design everything from scratch. This project has provided three main contributions to the WSN field. Provides analysis of different tradeoffs between cryptographic security strength and performances, which then provide security primitives suitable for the needs in a WSN environment. Security primitives form the link layer security and act as building blocks for higher layer protocols i.e. secure routing protocol. Implements and optimizes several security primitives in a low-power microcontroller (TI MSP430F1232) with very limited resources (256 bytes RAM, 8KB flash program memory). The different security primitives are compared according to the number of CPU cycles required per byte processed, specific architectures required (e.g. multiplier, large bit shift) and resources (RAM, ROM/flash) required. These comparisons assist in the evaluation of its corresponding energy consumption, and thus the applicability to wireless sensor nodes. Apart from investigating security primitives, research on various security protocols designed for WSN have also been conducted in order to optimize the security primitives for the security protocols design trend. Further, a new link layer security protocol using optimized security primitives is also proposed. This new protocol shows an improvement over the existing link layer security protocols. Security primitives with confidentiality and authenticity functions are implemented in the TinyMote sensor nodes from the Technical University of Vienna in a wireless sensor network. This is to demonstrate the practicality of the designs of this thesis in a real-world WSN environment. This research has achieved ultra-low power security primitives in wireless sensor network with average power consumption less than 3.5 µW (at 2 second packet transmission interval) and 700 nW (at 5 second packet transmission interval). The proposed link layer security protocol has also shown improvements over existing protocols in both security and power consumption.Dissertation (MEng (Computer Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2008.Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineeringunrestricte

On applications of simulated annealing to cryptology

Boolean functions are critical building blocks of symmetric-key ciphers. In most cases, the security of a cipher against a particular kind of attacks can be explained by the existence of certain properties of its underpinning Boolean functions. Therefore, the design of appropriate functions has received significant attention from researchers for several decades. Heuristic methods have become very powerful tools for designing such functions. In this thesis, we apply simulated annealing methods to construct Boolean functions with particular properties. Our results meet or exceed the best results of available theoretical constructions and/or heuristic searches in the literature, including a 10-variable balanced Boolean function with resiliency degree 2, algebraic degree 7, and nonlinearity 488 for the first time. This construction affirmatively answers the open problem about the existence of such functions. This thesis also includes results of cryptanalysis for symmetric ciphers, such as Geffe cipher and TREYFER cipher

Attacks in Stream Ciphers: A Survey

Nowadays there are different types of attacks in block and stream ciphers. In this work we will present some of the most used attacks on stream ciphers. We will present the newest techniques with an example of usage in a cipher, explain and comment. Previous we will explain the difference between the block ciphers and stream ciphers

On Quantum Slide Attacks

At Crypto 2016, Kaplan et al. proposed the first quantum exponential acceleration of a classical symmetric cryptanalysis technique: they showed that, in the superposition query model, Simon’s algorithm could be applied to accelerate the slide attack on the alternate-key cipher. This allows to recover an n-bit key with O(n) quantum time and queries. In this paper we propose many other types of quantum slide attacks, inspired by classical techniques including sliding with a twist, complementation slide and mirror slidex. These slide attacks on Feistel networks reach up to two round self-similarity with modular additions inside branch or key-addition operations. With only XOR operations, they reach up to four round self-similarity, with a cost at most quadratic in the block size. Some of these variants combined with whitening keys (FX construction)can also be successfully attacked. Furthermore, we show that some quantum slide attacks can be composed with other quantum attacks to perform efficient key-recoveries even when the round function is a strong function classically. Finally, we analyze the case of quantum slide attacks exploiting cycle-finding, that were thought to enjoy an exponential speed up in a paper by Bar-On et al. in2015, where these attacks were introduced. We show that the speed-up is smaller than expected and less impressive than the above variants, but nevertheless provide improved complexities on the previous known quantum attacks in the superpositionmodel for some self-similar SPN and Feistel constructions

Breaking Symmetric Cryptosystems Using Quantum Period Finding

Due to Shor's algorithm, quantum computers are a severe threat for public key cryptography. This motivated the cryptographic community to search for quantum-safe solutions. On the other hand, the impact of quantum computing on secret key cryptography is much less understood. In this paper, we consider attacks where an adversary can query an oracle implementing a cryptographic primitive in a quantum superposition of different states. This model gives a lot of power to the adversary, but recent results show that it is nonetheless possible to build secure cryptosystems in it. We study applications of a quantum procedure called Simon's algorithm (the simplest quantum period finding algorithm) in order to attack symmetric cryptosystems in this model. Following previous works in this direction, we show that several classical attacks based on finding collisions can be dramatically sped up using Simon's algorithm: finding a collision requires $\Omega(2^{n/2})$ queries in the classical setting, but when collisions happen with some hidden periodicity, they can be found with only $O(n)$ queries in the quantum model. We obtain attacks with very strong implications. First, we show that the most widely used modes of operation for authentication and authenticated encryption e.g. CBC-MAC, PMAC, GMAC, GCM, and OCB) are completely broken in this security model. Our attacks are also applicable to many CAESAR candidates: CLOC, AEZ, COPA, OTR, POET, OMD, and Minalpher. This is quite surprising compared to the situation with encryption modes: Anand et al. show that standard modes are secure with a quantum-secure PRF. Second, we show that Simon's algorithm can also be applied to slide attacks, leading to an exponential speed-up of a classical symmetric cryptanalysis technique in the quantum model.Comment: 31 pages, 14 figure

Hidden Shift Quantum Cryptanalysis and Implications

International audienceAt Eurocrypt 2017 a tweak to counter Simon's quantum attack was proposed: replace the common bitwise addition, with other operations, as a modular addition. The starting point of our paper is a follow up of these previous results: First, we have developed new algorithms that improve and generalize Kuperberg's algorithm for the hidden shift problem, which is the algorithm that applies instead of Simon when considering modular additions. Thanks to our improved algorithm, we have been able to build a quantum attack in the superposition model on Poly1305, proposed at FSE 2005, largely used and claimed to be quantumly secure. We also answer an open problem by analyzing the effect of the tweak to the FX construction. We have also generalized the algorithm. We propose for the first time a quantum algorithm for solving the problem with parallel modular additions , with a complexity that matches both Simon and Kuperberg in its extremes. We also propose a generic algorithm to solve the hidden shift problem in non-abelian groups. In order to verify the theoretical analysis we performed, and to get concrete estimates of the cost of the algorithms, we have simulated them, and were able to validate our estimated complexities. Finally, we analyze the security of some classical symmetric constructions with concrete parameters, to evaluate the impact and practicality of the proposed tweak, concluding that it does not seem to be efficient

State of the Art in Lightweight Symmetric Cryptography

Lightweight cryptography has been one of the hot topics in symmetric cryptography in the recent years. A huge number of lightweight algorithms have been published, standardized and/or used in commercial products. In this paper, we discuss the different implementation constraints that a lightweight algorithm is usually designed to satisfy in both the software and the hardware case. We also present an extensive survey of all lightweight symmetric primitives we are aware of. It covers designs from the academic community, from government agencies and proprietary algorithms which were reverse-engineered or leaked. Relevant national (NIST...) and international (ISO/IEC...) standards are listed. We identified several trends in the design of lightweight algorithms, such as the designers\u27 preference for ARX-based and bitsliced-S-Box-based designs or simpler key schedules. We also discuss more general trade-offs facing the authors of such algorithms and suggest a clearer distinction between two subsets of lightweight cryptography. The first, ultra-lightweight cryptography, deals with primitives fulfilling a unique purpose while satisfying specific and narrow constraints. The second is ubiquitous cryptography and it encompasses more versatile algorithms both in terms of functionality and in terms of implementation trade-offs