International standards for stream ciphers: a progress report

The main objective of this paper is to review the current status of stream cipher standardisation. The hope is that, by doing so, the algorithms and techniques that are likely to be standardised at some point during the next year or so will be subjected to rigorous scrutiny by the crytopgraphic community

Error Oracle Attacks on CBC Mode: Is There a Future for CBC Mode Encryption?

This paper is primarily concerned with the CBC block cipher mode. The impact on the usability of this mode of recently proposed padding oracle attacks, together with other related attacks described in this paper, is considered. For applications where unauthenticated encryption is required, the use of CBC mode is compared with its major symmetric rival, namely the stream cipher. It is argued that, where possible, authenticated encryption should be used, and, where this is not possible, a stream cipher would appear to be a superior choice. This raises a major question mark over the future use of CBC mode, except as part of a more complex mode designed to provide authenticated encryption

Optimal Forgeries Against Polynomial-Based MACs and GCM

Polynomial-based authentication algorithms, such as GCM and Poly1305, have seen widespread adoption in practice. Due to their importance, a significant amount of attention has been given to understanding and improving both proofs and attacks against such schemes. At EUROCRYPT 2005, Bernstein published the best known analysis of the schemes when instantiated with PRPs, thereby establishing the most lenient limits on the amount of data the schemes can process per key. A long line of work, initiated by Handschuh and Preneel at CRYPTO 2008, finds the best known attacks, advancing our understanding of the fragility of the schemes. Yet surprisingly, no known attacks perform as well as the predicted worst-case attacks allowed by Bernstein\u27s analysis, nor has there been any advancement in proofs improving Bernstein\u27s bounds, and the gap between attacks and analysis is significant. We settle the issue by finding a novel attack against polynomial-based authentication algorithms using PRPs, and combine it with new analysis, to show that Bernstein\u27s bound, and our attacks, are optimal

SUNDAE: Small Universal Deterministic Authenticated Encryption for the Internet of Things

Lightweight cryptography was developed in response to the increasing need to secure devices for the Internet of Things. After significant research effort, many new block ciphers have been designed targeting lightweight settings, optimizing efficiency metrics which conventional block ciphers did not. However, block ciphers must be used in modes of operation to achieve more advanced security goals such as data confidentiality and authenticity, a research area given relatively little attention in the lightweight setting. We introduce a new authenticated encryption (AE) mode of operation, SUNDAE, specially targeted for constrained environments. SUNDAE is smaller than other known lightweight modes in implementation area, such as CLOC, JAMBU, and COFB, however unlike these modes, SUNDAE is designed as a deterministic authenticated encryption (DAE) scheme, meaning it provides maximal security in settings where proper randomness is hard to generate, or secure storage must be minimized due to expense. Unlike other DAE schemes, such as GCM-SIV, SUNDAE can be implemented efficiently on both constrained devices, as well as the servers communicating with those devices. We prove SUNDAE secure relative to its underlying block cipher, and provide an extensive implementation study, with results in both software and hardware, demonstrating that SUNDAE offers improved compactness and power consumption in hardware compared to other lightweight AE modes, while simultaneously offering comparable performance to GCM-SIV on parallel high-end platforms

Cryptanalysis of Some Block Cipher Constructions

When the public-key cryptography was introduced in the 1970s, symmetric-key cryptography was believed to soon become outdated. Nevertheless, we still heavily rely on symmetric-key primitives as they give high-speed performance. They are used to secure mobile communication, e-commerce transactions, communication through virtual private networks and sending electronic tax returns, among many other everyday activities. However, the security of symmetric-key primitives does not depend on a well-known hard mathematical problem such as the factoring problem, which is the basis of the RSA public-key cryptosystem. Instead, the security of symmetric-key primitives is evaluated against known cryptanalytic techniques. Accordingly, the topic of furthering the state-of-the-art of cryptanalysis of symmetric-key primitives is an ever-evolving topic. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to the cryptanalysis of symmetric-key cryptographic primitives. Our focus is on block ciphers as well as hash functions that are built using block ciphers. Our contributions can be summarized as follows: First, we tackle the limitation of the current Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approaches to represent the differential propagation through large S-boxes. Indeed, we present a novel approach that can efficiently model the Difference Distribution Table (DDT) of large S-boxes, i.e., 8-bit S-boxes. As a proof of the validity and efficiency of our approach, we apply it on two out of the seven AES-round based constructions that were recently proposed in FSE 2016. Using our approach, we improve the lower bound on the number of active S-boxes of one construction and the upper bound on the best differential characteristic of the other. Then, we propose meet-in-the-middle attacks using the idea of efficient differential enumeration against two Japanese block ciphers, i.e., Hierocrypt-L1 and Hierocrypt-3. Both block ciphers were submitted to the New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity, and Encryption (NESSIE) project, selected as one of the Japanese e-Government recommended ciphers in 2003 and reselected in the candidate recommended ciphers list in 2013. We construct five S-box layer distinguishers that we use to recover the master keys of reduced 8 S-box layer versions of both block ciphers. In addition, we present another meet-in-the-middle attack on Hierocrypt-3 with slightly higher time and memory complexities but with much less data complexity. Afterwards, we shift focus to another equally important cryptanalytic attack, i.e., impossible differential attack. SPARX-64/128 is selected among the SPARX family that was recently proposed to provide ARX based block cipher whose security against differential and linear cryptanalysis can be proven. We assess the security of SPARX-64/128 against impossible differential attack and show that it can reach the same number of rounds the division-based integral attack, proposed by the designers, can reach. Then, we pick Kiasu-BC as an example of a tweakable block cipher and prove that, on contrary to its designers’ claim, the freedom in choosing the publicly known tweak decreases its security margin. Lastly, we study the impossible differential properties of the underlying block cipher of the Russian hash standard Streebog and point out the potential risk in using it as a MAC scheme in the secret-IV mode

EnCounter: On Breaking the Nonce Barrier in Differential Fault Analysis with a Case-Study on PAEQ

This work exploits internal differentials within a cipher in the context of Differential Fault Analysis (DFA). This in turn overcomes the nonce barrier which acts as a natural counter-measure against DFA. We introduce the concept of internal differential fault analysis which requires only one faulty ciphertext. In particular, the analysis is applicable to parallelizable ciphers that use the counter-mode. As a proof of concept we develop an internal differential fault attack called EnCounter on PAEQ which is an AES based parallelizable authenticated cipher presently in the second round of on-going CAESAR competition. The attack is able to uniquely retrieve the key of three versions of full-round PAEQ of key-sizes 64, 80 and 128 bits with complexities of about $2^{16}$, $2^{16}$ and $2^{50}$ respectively. Finally, this work addresses in detail the instance of fault analysis with varying amounts of partial state information and also presents the first analysis of PAEQ

Security of Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The chapters in this open access book arise out of the EU Cost Action project Cryptacus, the objective of which was to improve and adapt existent cryptanalysis methodologies and tools to the ubiquitous computing framework. The cryptanalysis implemented lies along four axes: cryptographic models, cryptanalysis of building blocks, hardware and software security engineering, and security assessment of real-world systems. The authors are top-class researchers in security and cryptography, and the contributions are of value to researchers and practitioners in these domains. This book is open access under a CC BY license

Algoritmos criptográficos e o seu desempenho no Arduíno

O Arduíno é uma plataforma muito robusta e multifacetada utilizada em diversas situações e, cada vez mais, um elemento relevante na arquitetura da Internet das Coisas. Ao disponibilizar várias interfaces de comunicação sem fios, pode ser utilizado para controlar eletrodomésticos, portas, sensores de temperatura, etc. permitindo implementar facilmente a comunicação entre estas “coisas”. Nesta tese foram estudadas as principais redes sem fios utilizadas pelo Arduíno (Bluetooth Low Energy [BLE], Wi-Fi e ZigBee) para tentar perceber qual a que tem o melhor desempenho, vantagens e desvantagens de cada uma, quais os módulos necessários para permitir ao Arduíno utilizar esse tipo de rede sem fios, quais as principais funções para que foram projetadas quando criadas e qual o sistema de segurança utilizado nestas redes. Estas diferentes tecnologias sem fios permitem uma maior mobilidade e uma maior flexibilidade no desenho das estruturas de rede do que as redes com fios convencionais. Porém, este tipo de redes têm uma grande desvantagem já que qualquer um dentro do alcance da rede sem fios consegue intercetar o sinal que está a ser transmitido. Para solucionar e proteger a informação que é transmitida por estas redes foram desenvolvidos vários algoritmos de criptografia. Estes dados encriptados só podem ser lidos por dispositivos que tenham uma determinada chave. Os algoritmos de criptografia Data Encryption Standard (DES), Triple DES (TDES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), eXtended TEA (XTEA) Corrected Block TEA (XXTEA) estão entre as técnicas mais conhecidos e usadas tualmente. Nesta tese foram analisados estes algoritmos e as suas vulnerabilidades, tendo também sido feito um levantamento dos principais ataques existentes para avaliar se ainda são seguros atualmente. De forma a avaliar a possibilidade de utilizar o Arduíno em aplicações que utilizem comunicações sem fios com segurança, foram realizados testes de desempenho com os algoritmos de criptografia estudados, usando bibliotecas já existentes. Nos testes de desempenho implementados verificou-se que o AES é bastante mais rápido do que as outras soluções, oferecendo ainda uma maior segurança. Já o TDES verificou-se ser bastante lento, justificando o porquê de o algoritmo ser pouco usado, sendo ao longo dos anos substituído pelo AES. O XXTEA ficou em posição intermédia no teste de desempenho, tendo uma relação segurança/desempenho interessante e revelando-se assim uma escolha melhor do que o TDES.The Arduino is a very robust and multifaceted platform used in many situations and, increasingly, a relevant element in the Internet of Things. By providing several wireless communication interfaces, it can be used to control household appliances, doors, temperature sensors, etc. Allowing easy implementation of communication between these "things". In this thesis the main wireless networks used by Arduino (Bluetooth Low Energy [BLE], Wi-Fi and ZigBee) were studied to try to understand which one has the best performance, the advantages and disadvantages of each one, the modules needed to implement each wireless network and what security system are used. These different wireless technologies allow for greater mobility and greater flexibility in the design of network structures than conventional wired networks. However, such networks have a major disadvantage since anyone within the range of the wireless network can intercept the signal being transmitted. Several cryptographic algorithms have been developed to solve and protect the information that is transmitted by these networks. This encrypted data can only be read by devices that have a certain key. Triple Encryption Standard (DES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), eXtended TEA (XTEA) and Corrected Block TEA (XXTEA) encryption algorithms are among the best known and currently used algorithms. In this thesis these algorithms have been analyzed to compare their vulnerabilities and to identify the main existing attacks. In order to evaluate the possibility of using Arduino in applications that use wireless communications with security, performance tests were implemented using existing libraries. The results show that the AES is much faster than the other algorithms, offering even greater security. TDES was found to be quite slow, justifying why the algorithm has little used, and why over the years has been replaced by AES. The XXTEA was ranked in the middle of the performance test, having an interesting safety/performance ratio proving it to be a better choice than TDES

An Effective RC4 Stream Cipher

RC4 is the most widely used stream cipher around. A lot of modifications of RC4 cipher can be seen in open literature. Most of them enhance the secrecy of the cipher and the security levels have been analyzed theoretically by using mathematics. In this paper, a new effective RC4 cipher is proposed and the security analysis has been done using Shannon’s Secrecy theories where numerical values are obtained to depict the secrecy. The proposed cipher is a combination of Improved RC4 cipher proposed by Jian Xie et al and modified RC4 cipher proposed by T.D.B Weerasinghe, which were published prior to this work. Combination is done in such a way that the concept used in the modified RC4 algorithm is used in the Improved RC4 cipher by Jian Xie et al. Importantly, an immense improvement of performance and secrecy are obtained by this combination. Hence this particular modification of RC4 cipher can be used in software applications where there is a need to improve the throughput as well as secrecy