New Insights on AES-like SPN Ciphers

It has been proved in Eurocrypt 2016 that if the details of the S-boxes are not exploited, an impossible differential and a zero-correlation hull can extend over at most 4 rounds of the AES. This paper concentrates on distinguishing attacks on AES-like SPN ciphers by investigating the details of both the S-boxes and the MDS matrices and illustrates some new insights on the security of these schemes. Firstly, we construct several types of $5$-round zero-correlation linear hulls for AES-like ciphers that adopt identical S-boxes to construct the round function and that have two identical elements in a column of the inverse of their MDS matrices. We then use these linear hulls to construct 5-round integrals provided that the difference of two sub-key bytes is known. Furthermore, we prove that we can always distinguish 5 rounds of such ciphers from random permutations even when the difference of the sub-keys is unknown. Secondly, the constraints for the S-boxes and special property of the MDS matrices can be removed if the cipher is used as a building block of the Miyaguchi-Preneel hash function. As an example, we construct two types of 5-round distinguishers for the hash function Whirlpool. Finally, we show that, in the chosen-ciphertext mode, there exist some nontrivial distinguishers for 5-round AES. To the best of our knowledge, this is the longest distinguishing attack for the round-reduced AES in the secret-key setting. Since the 5-round distinguisher for the AES can only be constructed in the chosen-ciphertext mode, the security margin for the round-reduced AES under the chosen-plaintext attack may be different from that under the chosen-ciphertext attack

Impossible Differential Attack on Simpira v2

Simpira v2 is a family of cryptographic permutations proposed at ASIACRYPT 2016 which can be used to construct high throughput block ciphers using the Even-Mansour construction, permutation-based hashing and wide-block authenticated encryption. In this paper, we give a 9-round impossible differential of Simpira-4, which turns out to be the first 9-round impossible differential. In order to get some efficient key recovery attacks on its block cipher mode (EM construction with Simpira-4), we use some 6/7-round shrunken impossible differentials. Based on eight different 6-round impossible differentials, we propose a series of 7-round key recovery attacks on the block cipher mode, each 6-round impossible differential helps to recover 32-bit of the master key (512-bit) and totally half of the master key bits are recovered. The attacks need $2^{57}$ chosen plaintexts and $2^{57}$ 7-round encryptions. Furthermore, based on ten 7-round impossible differentials, we add one round on the top or at the bottom to mount ten 8-round key recovery attacks on the block cipher mode, which recover the full key space (512-bit) with the data complexity of $2^{170}$ chosen plaintexts and time complexity of $2^{170}$ 8-round encryptions. Those are the first attacks on round-reduced Simpira v2 and do not threaten the EM mode with the full 15-round Simpira-4

A General Proof Framework for Recent AES Distinguishers

In this paper, a new framework is developed for proving and adapting the recently proposed multiple-of-8 property and mixture-differential distinguishers. The above properties are formulated as immediate consequences of an equivalence relation on the input pairs, under which the difference at the output of the round function is invariant. This approach provides a further understanding of these newly developed distinguishers. For example, it clearly shows that the branch number of the linear layer does not influence the validity of the property, on the contrary of what was previously believed. We further provide an extension of the mixture-differential distinguishers and multiple-of-8 property to any SPN and to a larger class of subspaces. These adapted properties can then be exhibited in a systematic way for other ciphers than the AES. We illustrate this with the examples of Midori, Klein, LED and Skinny

A New Structural-Differential Property of 5-Round AES

AES is probably the most widely studied and used block cipher. Also versions with a reduced number of rounds are used as a building block in many cryptographic schemes, e.g. several candidates of the CAESAR competition are based on it. So far, non-random properties which are independent of the secret key are known for up to 4 rounds of AES. These include differential, impossible differential, and integral properties. In this paper we describe a new structural property for up to 5 rounds of AES, differential in nature and which is independent of the secret key, of the details of the MixColumns matrix (with the exception that the branch number must be maximal) and of the SubBytes operation. It is very simple: By appropriate choices of difference for a number of input pairs it is possible to make sure that the number of times that the difference of the resulting output pairs lie in a particular subspace is always a multiple of 8. We not only observe this property experimentally (using a small-scale version of AES), we also give a detailed proof as to why it has to exist. As a first application of this property, we describe a way to distinguish the 5-round AES permutation (or its inverse) from a random permutation with only $2^{32}$ chosen texts that has a computational cost of $2^{35.6}$ look-ups into memory of size $2^{36}$ bytes which has a success probability greater than 99%

Cryptographic Constructions Supporting Implicit Data Integrity

We study a methodology for supporting data integrity called \lq implicit integrity\rq $\>$ and present cryptographic constructions supporting it. Implicit integrity allows for corruption detection without producing, storing or verifying mathematical summaries of the content such as MACs and ICVs, or any other type of message expansion. As with authenticated encryption, the main idea behind this methodology is that, whereas typical user data demonstrate patterns such as repeated bytes or words, decrypted data resulting from corrupted ciphertexts no longer demonstrate such patterns. Thus, by checking the entropy of some decrypted ciphertexts, corruption can be possibly detected. The main contribution of this paper is a notion of security which is associated with implicit integrity, and which is different from the typical requirement that the output of cryptographic systems should be indistinguishable from the output of a random permutation. The notion of security we discuss reflects the fact that it should be computationally difficult for an adversary to corrupt some ciphertext so that the resulting plaintext demonstrates specific patterns. We introduce two kinds of adversaries. First, an input perturbing adversary performs content corruption attacks. Second an oracle replacing adversary performs content replay attacks. We discuss requirements for supporting implicit integrity in these two adversary models, and provide security bounds for a construction called IVP, a three-level confusion diffusion network which can support implicit integrity and is inexpensive to implement

Saturnin: a suite of lightweight symmetric algorithms for post-quantum security

International audienceThe cryptographic algorithms needed to ensure the security of our communications have a cost. For devices with little computing power, whose number is expected to grow significantly with the spread of the Internet of Things (IoT), this cost can be a problem. A simple answer to this problem is a compromise on the security level: through a weaker round function or a smaller number of rounds, the security level can be decreased in order to cheapen the implementation of the cipher. At the same time, quantum computers are expected to disrupt the state of the art in cryptography in the near future. For public-key cryptography, the NIST has organized a dedicated process to standardize new algorithms. The impact of quantum computing is harder to assess in the symmetric case but its study is an active research area.In this paper, we specify a new block cipher, Saturnin, and its usage in different modes to provide hashing and authenticated encryption in such a way that we can rigorously argue its security in the post-quantum setting. Its security analysis follows naturally from that of the AES, while our use of components that are easily implemented in a bitsliced fashion ensures a low cost for our primitives. Our aim is to provide a new lightweight suite of algorithms that performs well on small devices, in particular micro-controllers, while providing a high security level even in the presence of quantum computers. Saturnin is a 256-bit block cipher with a 256-bit key and an additional 9-bit parameter for domain separation. Using it, we built two authenticated ciphers and a hash function.• Saturnin-CTR-Cascade is an authenticated cipher using the counter mode and a separate MAC. It requires two passes over the data but its implementation does not require the inverse block cipher.• Saturnin-Short is an authenticated cipher intended for messages with a length strictly smaller than 128 bits which uses only one call to Saturnin to providenconfidentiality and integrity.• Saturnin-Hash is a 256-bit hash function.In this paper, we specify this suite of algorithms and argue about their security in both the classical and the post-quantum setting

Saturnin: a suite of lightweight symmetric algorithms for post-quantum security

Soumission à la compétition "Lightweight Cryptography" du NISTThe cryptographic algorithms needed to ensure the security of our communications have a cost. For devices with little computing power, whose number is expected to grow significantly with the spread of the Internet of Things (IoT), this cost can be a problem. A simple answer to this problem is a compromise on the security level: through a weaker round function or a smaller number of rounds, the security level can be decreased in order to cheapen the implementation of the cipher. At the same time, quantum computers are expected to disrupt the state of the art in cryptography in the near future. For public key cryptography, the NIST has organized a dedicated process to standardize new algorithms. The impact of quantum computing is harder to assess in the symmetric case but its study is an active research area. In this document, we specify a new block cipher, Saturnin, and its usage in different modes to provide hashing and authenticated encryption in such a way that we can rigorously argue its security in the post-quantum setting. Its security analysis follows naturally from that of the AES, while our use of components that are easily implemented in a bitsliced fashion ensures a low cost for our primitives. Our aim is to provide a new lightweight suite of algorithms that performs well on small devices, in particular micro-controllers, while providing a high security level even in the presence of quantum computers. Saturnin is a 256-bit block cipher with a 256-bit key and an additional 9-bit parameter for domain separation. Using it, we built two authenticated ciphers and a hash function. • Saturnin-CTR-Cascade is an authenticated cipher using the counter mode and a separate MAC. It requires two passes over the data but its implementation does not require the inverse block cipher. • Saturnin-Short is an authenticated cipher intended for messages with a length strictly smaller than 128 bits which uses only one call to Saturnin to provide confidentiality and integrity. • Saturnin-Hash is a 256-bit hash function. In this document, we specify this suite of algorithms and argue about their security in both the classical and the post-quantum setting

Algorithmes quantiques pour la cryptanalyse et cryptographie symétrique post-quantique

Modern cryptography relies on the notion of computational security. The level of security given by a cryptosystem is expressed as an amount of computational resources required to break it. The goal of cryptanalysis is to find attacks, that is, algorithms with lower complexities than the conjectural bounds.With the advent of quantum computing devices, these levels of security have to be updated to take a whole new notion of algorithms into account. At the same time, cryptography is becoming widely used in small devices (smart cards, sensors), with new cost constraints.In this thesis, we study the security of secret-key cryptosystems against quantum adversaries.We first build new quantum algorithms for k-list (k-XOR or k-SUM) problems, by composing exhaustive search procedures. Next, we present dedicated cryptanalysis results, starting with a new quantum cryptanalysis tool, the offline Simon's algorithm. We describe new attacks against the lightweight algorithms Spook and Gimli and we perform the first quantum security analysis of the standard cipher AES.Finally, we specify Saturnin, a family of lightweight cryptosystems oriented towards post-quantum security. Thanks to a very similar structure, its security relies largely on the analysis of AES.La cryptographie moderne est fondée sur la notion de sécurité computationnelle. Les niveaux de sécurité attendus des cryptosystèmes sont exprimés en nombre d'opérations ; une attaque est un algorithme d'une complexité inférieure à la borne attendue. Mais ces niveaux de sécurité doivent aujourd'hui prendre en compte une nouvelle notion d'algorithme : le paradigme du calcul quantique. Dans le même temps,la délégation grandissante du chiffrement à des puces RFID, objets connectés ou matériels embarqués pose de nouvelles contraintes de coût.Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la sécurité des cryptosystèmes à clé secrète face à un adversaire quantique.Nous introduisons tout d'abord de nouveaux algorithmes quantiques pour les problèmes génériques de k-listes (k-XOR ou k-SUM), construits en composant des procédures de recherche exhaustive.Nous présentons ensuite des résultats de cryptanalyse dédiée, en commençant par un nouvel outil de cryptanalyse quantique, l'algorithme de Simon hors-ligne. Nous décrivons de nouvelles attaques contre les algorithmes Spook et Gimli et nous effectuons la première étude de sécurité quantique du chiffrement AES. Dans un troisième temps, nous spécifions Saturnin, une famille de cryptosystèmes à bas coût orientés vers la sécurité post-quantique. La structure de Saturnin est proche de celle de l'AES et sa sécurité en tire largement parti