A Survey of ARX-based Symmetric-key Primitives

Addition Rotation XOR is suitable for fast implementation symmetric –key primitives, such as stream and block ciphers. This paper presents a review of several block and stream ciphers based on ARX construction followed by the discussion on the security analysis of symmetric key primitives where the best attack for every cipher was carried out. We benchmark the implementation on software and hardware according to the evaluation metrics. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a reference for a better selection of ARX design strategy

Rotational Cryptanalysis From a Differential-linear Perspective: Practical Distinguishers for Round-reduced FRIET, Xoodoo, and Alzette

The differential-linear attack, combining the power of the two most effective techniques for symmetric-key cryptanalysis, was proposed by Langford and Hellman at CRYPTO 1994. From the exact formula for evaluating the bias of a differential-linear distinguisher (JoC 2017), to the differential-linear connectivity table (DLCT) technique for dealing with the dependencies in the switch between the differential and linear parts (EUROCRYPT 2019), and to the improvements in the context of cryptanalysis of ARX primitives (CRYPTO 2020), we have seen significant development of the differential-linear attack during the last four years. In this work, we further extend this framework by replacing the differential part of the attack by rotational-xor differentials. Along the way, we establish the theoretical link between the rotational-xor differential and linear approximations, revealing that it is nontrivial to directly apply the closed formula for the bias of ordinary differential- linear attack to rotational differential-linear cryptanalysis. We then revisit the rotational cryptanalysis from the perspective of differential- linear cryptanalysis and generalize Morawiecki et al.’s technique for analyzing Keccak, which leads to a practical method for estimating the bias of a (rotational) differential-linear distinguisher in the special case where the output linear mask is a unit vector. Finally, we apply the rotational differential-linear technique to the permutations involved in FRIET, Xoodoo, Alzette, and SipHash. This gives significant improvements over existing cryptanalytic results or offers explanations for previous experimental distinguishers without a theoretical foundation. To confirm the validity of our analysis, all distinguishers with practical complexities are verified experimentally

Analysis and Design of Symmetric Cryptographic Algorithms

This doctoral thesis is dedicated to the analysis and the design of symmetric cryptographic algorithms. In the first part of the dissertation, we deal with fault-based attacks on cryptographic circuits which belong to the field of active implementation attacks and aim to retrieve secret keys stored on such chips. Our main focus lies on the cryptanalytic aspects of those attacks. In particular, we target block ciphers with a lightweight and (often) non-bijective key schedule where the derived subkeys are (almost) independent from each other. An attacker who is able to reconstruct one of the subkeys is thus not necessarily able to directly retrieve other subkeys or even the secret master key by simply reversing the key schedule. We introduce a framework based on differential fault analysis that allows to attack block ciphers with an arbitrary number of independent subkeys and which rely on a substitution-permutation network. These methods are then applied to the lightweight block ciphers LED and PRINCE and we show in both cases how to recover the secret master key requiring only a small number of fault injections. Moreover, we investigate approaches that utilize algebraic instead of differential techniques for the fault analysis and discuss advantages and drawbacks. At the end of the first part of the dissertation, we explore fault-based attacks on the block cipher Bel-T which also has a lightweight key schedule but is not based on a substitution-permutation network but instead on the so-called Lai-Massey scheme. The framework mentioned above is thus not usable against Bel-T. Nevertheless, we also present techniques for the case of Bel-T that enable full recovery of the secret key in a very efficient way using differential fault analysis. In the second part of the thesis, we focus on authenticated encryption schemes. While regular ciphers only protect privacy of processed data, authenticated encryption schemes also secure its authenticity and integrity. Many of these ciphers are additionally able to protect authenticity and integrity of so-called associated data. This type of data is transmitted unencrypted but nevertheless must be protected from being tampered with during transmission. Authenticated encryption is nowadays the standard technique to protect in-transit data. However, most of the currently deployed schemes have deficits and there are many leverage points for improvements. With NORX we introduce a novel authenticated encryption scheme supporting associated data. This algorithm was designed with high security, efficiency in both hardware and software, simplicity, and robustness against side-channel attacks in mind. Next to its specification, we present special features, security goals, implementation details, extensive performance measurements and discuss advantages over currently deployed standards. Finally, we describe our preliminary security analysis where we investigate differential and rotational properties of NORX. Noteworthy are in particular the newly developed techniques for differential cryptanalysis of NORX which exploit the power of SAT- and SMT-solvers and have the potential to be easily adaptable to other encryption schemes as well.Diese Doktorarbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Analyse und dem Entwurf von symmetrischen kryptographischen Algorithmen. Im ersten Teil der Dissertation befassen wir uns mit fehlerbasierten Angriffen auf kryptographische Schaltungen, welche dem Gebiet der aktiven Seitenkanalangriffe zugeordnet werden und auf die Rekonstruktion geheimer Schlüssel abzielen, die auf diesen Chips gespeichert sind. Unser Hauptaugenmerk liegt dabei auf den kryptoanalytischen Aspekten dieser Angriffe. Insbesondere beschäftigen wir uns dabei mit Blockchiffren, die leichtgewichtige und eine (oft) nicht-bijektive Schlüsselexpansion besitzen, bei denen die erzeugten Teilschlüssel voneinander (nahezu) unabhängig sind. Ein Angreifer, dem es gelingt einen Teilschlüssel zu rekonstruieren, ist dadurch nicht in der Lage direkt weitere Teilschlüssel oder sogar den Hauptschlüssel abzuleiten indem er einfach die Schlüsselexpansion umkehrt. Wir stellen Techniken basierend auf differenzieller Fehleranalyse vor, die es ermöglichen Blockchiffren zu analysieren, welche eine beliebige Anzahl unabhängiger Teilschlüssel einsetzen und auf Substitutions-Permutations Netzwerken basieren. Diese Methoden werden im Anschluss auf die leichtgewichtigen Blockchiffren LED und PRINCE angewandt und wir zeigen in beiden Fällen wie der komplette geheime Schlüssel mit einigen wenigen Fehlerinjektionen rekonstruiert werden kann. Darüber hinaus untersuchen wir Methoden, die algebraische statt differenzielle Techniken der Fehleranalyse einsetzen und diskutieren deren Vor- und Nachteile. Am Ende des ersten Teils der Dissertation befassen wir uns mit fehlerbasierten Angriffen auf die Blockchiffre Bel-T, welche ebenfalls eine leichtgewichtige Schlüsselexpansion besitzt jedoch nicht auf einem Substitutions-Permutations Netzwerk sondern auf dem sogenannten Lai-Massey Schema basiert. Die oben genannten Techniken können daher bei Bel-T nicht angewandt werden. Nichtsdestotrotz werden wir auch für den Fall von Bel-T Verfahren vorstellen, die in der Lage sind den vollständigen geheimen Schlüssel sehr effizient mit Hilfe von differenzieller Fehleranalyse zu rekonstruieren. Im zweiten Teil der Doktorarbeit beschäftigen wir uns mit authentifizierenden Verschlüsselungsverfahren. Während gewöhnliche Chiffren nur die Vertraulichkeit der verarbeiteten Daten sicherstellen, gewährleisten authentifizierende Verschlüsselungsverfahren auch deren Authentizität und Integrität. Viele dieser Chiffren sind darüber hinaus in der Lage auch die Authentizität und Integrität von sogenannten assoziierten Daten zu gewährleisten. Daten dieses Typs werden in nicht-verschlüsselter Form übertragen, müssen aber dennoch gegen unbefugte Veränderungen auf dem Transportweg geschützt sein. Authentifizierende Verschlüsselungsverfahren bilden heutzutage die Standardtechnologie um Daten während der Übertragung zu beschützen. Aktuell eingesetzte Verfahren weisen jedoch oftmals Defizite auf und es existieren vielfältige Ansatzpunkte für Verbesserungen. Mit NORX stellen wir ein neuartiges authentifizierendes Verschlüsselungsverfahren vor, welches assoziierte Daten unterstützt. Dieser Algorithmus wurde vor allem im Hinblick auf Einsatzgebiete mit hohen Sicherheitsanforderungen, Effizienz in Hardware und Software, Einfachheit, und Robustheit gegenüber Seitenkanalangriffen entwickelt. Neben der Spezifikation präsentieren wir besondere Eigenschaften, angestrebte Sicherheitsziele, Details zur Implementierung, umfassende Performanz-Messungen und diskutieren Vorteile gegenüber aktuellen Standards. Schließlich stellen wir Ergebnisse unserer vorläufigen Sicherheitsanalyse vor, bei der wir uns vor allem auf differenzielle Merkmale und Rotationseigenschaften von NORX konzentrieren. Erwähnenswert sind dabei vor allem die für die differenzielle Kryptoanalyse von NORX entwickelten Techniken, die auf die Effizienz von SAT- und SMT-Solvern zurückgreifen und das Potential besitzen relativ einfach auch auf andere Verschlüsselungsverfahren übertragen werden zu können

Feistel Like Construction of Involutory Binary Matrices With High Branch Number

In this paper, we propose a generic method to construct involutory binary matrices from a three round Feistel scheme with a linear round function. We prove bounds on the maximum achievable branch number (BN) and the number of fixed points of our construction. We also define two families of efficiently implementable round functions to be used in our method. The usage of these families in the proposed method produces matrices achieving the proven bounds on branch numbers and fixed points. Moreover, we show that BN of the transpose matrix is the same with the original matrix for the function families we defined. Some of the generated matrices are \emph{Maximum Distance Binary Linear} (MDBL), i.e. matrices with the highest achievable BN. The number of fixed points of the generated matrices are close to the expected value for a random involution. Generated matrices are especially suitable for utilising in bitslice block ciphers and hash functions. They can be implemented efficiently in many platforms, from low cost CPUs to dedicated hardware

Design and Cryptanalysis of Lightweight Symmetric Key Primitives

The need for lightweight cryptographic primitives to replace the traditional standardized primitives such as AES, SHA-2 and SHA-3, which are unrealistic in constrained environments, has been anticipated by the cryptographic community for over a decade and half. Such an anticipation came to reality by the apparent proliferation of Radio Frequency Identifiers (RFIDs), Internet of Things (IoT), smart devices and sensor networks in our daily lives. All these devices operate in constrained environments and require reasonable efficiency with low implementation costs and sufficient security. Accordingly, designing lightweight symmetric key cryptographic primitives and analyzing the state-of-the-art algorithms is an active area of research for both academia and industry, which is directly followed by the ongoing National Institute of Standards and Technology’s lightweight cryptography (NIST LWC) standardization project. In this thesis, we focus on the design and security analysis of such primitives. First, we present the design of four lightweight cryptographic permutations, namely sLiSCP, sLiSCP-light, ACE and WAGE. At a high level, these permutations adopt a Nonlinear Feedback Shift Register (NLFSR) based design paradigm. sLiSCP, sLiSCP-light and ACE use reduced-round Simeck block cipher, while WAGE employs Welch-Gong (WG) permutation and two 7-bit sboxes over the finite field $F_{2^7}$ as their underlying nonlinear components. We discuss their design rationale and analyze the security with respect to differential and linear, integral and symmetry based distinguishers using automated tools such as Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) and SAT/SMT solvers. Second, we show the applications of these permutations to achieve Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD), Message Authentication Code (MAC), Pseudorandom Bit Generator (PRBG) and Hash functionalities. We introduce the idea of the unified round function, which, when combined in a sponge mode can provide all the aforementioned functionalities with the same circuitry. We give concrete instantiations of several AEAD and hash schemes with varying security levels, e.g., 80, 96, 112 and 128 bits. Next, we present Spoc, a new AEAD mode of operation which offers higher security guarantees compared to traditional sponge-based AEAD schemes with smaller states. We instantiate Spoc with sLiSCP-light permutation and propose another two lightweight AEAD algorithms. Notably, 4 of our proposed schemes, namely ACE, Spix, Spoc and WAGE are round 2 candidates of NIST’s LWC project. Finally, we present cryptanalytic results on some lightweight ciphers. We first analyze the nonlinear initialization phase of WG-5 stream cipher using the division property based cube attack, and give a key recovery attack on 24 (out of 64) rounds with data and time complexities $2^{6.32}$ and $2^{76:81}$, respectively. Next, we propose a novel property of block ciphers called correlated sequences and show its applications to meet-in-the-middle attack. Consequently, we give the best key recovery attacks (up to 27 out of 32 rounds in a single key setting) on Simon and Simeck ciphers with block and key sizes 32 and 64 bits, respectively. The attack requires 3 known plaintext-ciphertext pairs and has a time complexity close to average exhaustive search. It is worth noting that variants of WG-5 and Simeck are the core components of aforementioned AEAD and hash schemes. Lastly, we present practical forgery attacks on Limdolen and HERN which are round 1 candidates of NIST LWC project. We show the existence of structural weaknesses which could be exploited to forge any message with success probability of 1. For Limdolen, we require the output of a single encryption query while for HERN we need at most 4 encryption queries for a valid forgery. Following our attack, both designs are eliminated from second round

Design and Cryptanalysis of Symmetric-Key Algorithms in Black and White-box Models

Cryptography studies secure communications. In symmetric-key cryptography, the communicating parties have a shared secret key which allows both to encrypt and decrypt messages. The encryption schemes used are very efficient but have no rigorous security proof. In order to design a symmetric-key primitive, one has to ensure that the primitive is secure at least against known attacks. During 4 years of my doctoral studies at the University of Luxembourg under the supervision of Prof. Alex Biryukov, I studied symmetric-key cryptography and contributed to several of its topics. Part I is about the structural and decomposition cryptanalysis. This type of cryptanalysis aims to exploit properties of the algorithmic structure of a cryptographic function. The first goal is to distinguish a function with a particular structure from random, structure-less functions. The second goal is to recover components of the structure in order to obtain a decomposition of the function. Decomposition attacks are also used to uncover secret structures of S-Boxes, cryptographic functions over small domains. In this part, I describe structural and decomposition cryptanalysis of the Feistel Network structure, decompositions of the S-Box used in the recent Russian cryptographic standard, and a decomposition of the only known APN permutation in even dimension. Part II is about the invariant-based cryptanalysis. This method became recently an active research topic. It happened mainly due to recent extreme cryptographic designs, which turned out to be vulnerable to this cryptanalysis method. In this part, I describe an invariant-based analysis of NORX, an authenticated cipher. Further, I show a theoretical study of linear layers that preserve low-degree invariants of a particular form used in the recent attacks on block ciphers. Part III is about the white-box cryptography. In the white-box model, an adversary has full access to the cryptographic implementation, which in particular may contain a secret key. The possibility of creating implementations of symmetric-key primitives secure in this model is a long-standing open question. Such implementations have many applications in industry; in particular, in mobile payment systems. In this part, I study the possibility of applying masking, a side-channel countermeasure, to protect white-box implementations. I describe several attacks on direct application of masking and provide a provably-secure countermeasure against a strong class of the attacks. Part IV is about the design of symmetric-key primitives. I contributed to design of the block cipher family SPARX and to the design of a suite of cryptographic algorithms, which includes the cryptographic permutation family SPARKLE, the cryptographic hash function family ESCH, and the authenticated encryption family SCHWAEMM. In this part, I describe the security analysis that I made for these designs