Automatic Search of Truncated Impossible Differentials for Word-Oriented Block Ciphers (Full Version)

Impossible differential cryptanalysis is a powerful technique to recover the secret key of block ciphers by exploiting the fact that in block ciphers specific input and output differences are not compatible. This paper introduces a novel tool to search truncated impossible differentials for word-oriented block ciphers with bijective Sboxes. Our tool generalizes the earlier $\mathcal{U}$-method and the UID-method. It allows to reduce the gap between the best impossible differentials found by these methods and the best known differentials found by ad hoc methods that rely on cryptanalytic insights. The time and space complexities of our tool in judging an $r$-round truncated impossible differential are about $O(c\cdot l^4\cdot r^4)$ and $O(c\u27\cdot l^2\cdot r^2)$ respectively, where $l$ is the number of words in the plaintext and $c$, $c\u27$ are constants depending on the machine and the block cipher. In order to demonstrate the strength of our tool, we show that it does not only allow to automatically rediscover the longest truncated impossible differentials of many word-oriented block ciphers, but also finds new results. It independently rediscovers all 72 known truncated impossible differentials on 9-round CLEFIA. In addition, finds new truncated impossible differentials for AES, ARIA, Camellia without FL and FL$^{-1}$ layers, E2, LBlock, MIBS and Piccolo. Although our tool does not improve the lengths of impossible differentials for existing block ciphers, it helps to close the gap between the best known results of previous tools and those of manual cryptanalysis

New Impossible Differential Search Tool from Design and Cryptanalysis Aspects

In this paper, a new tool searching for impossible differentials against symmetric-key primitives is presented. Compared to the previous tools, our tool can detect any contradiction between input and output differences, and it can take into account the property inside the S-box when its size is small e.g. 4 bits. In addition, several techniques are proposed to evaluate 8-bit S-box. With this tool, the number of rounds of impossible differentials are improved from the previous best results by 1 round for Midori128, Lilliput, and Minalpher. The tool also finds new impossible differentials of ARIA and MIBS. We manually verify the impossibility of the searched results, which reveals new structural properties of those designs. Our tool can be implemented only by slightly modifying the previous differential search tool using Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP), while the previous tools need to be implemented independently of the differential search tools. This motivates us to discuss the usage of our tool particular for the design process. With this tool, the maximum number of rounds of impossible differentials can be proven under reasonable assumptions and the tool is applied to various concrete designs

New Properties of Double Boomerang Connectivity Table

The double boomerang connectivity table (DBCT) is a new table proposed recently to capture the behavior of two consecutive S-boxes in boomerang attacks. In this paper, we observe an interesting property of DBCT of S-box that the ladder switch and the S-box switch happen in most cases for two continuous S-boxes, and for some S-boxes only S-box switch and ladder switch are possible. This property implies an additional criterion for S-boxes to resist the boomerang attacks and provides as well a new evaluation direction for an S-box. Using an extension of the DBCT, we verify that some boomerang distinguishers of TweAES and Deoxys are flawed. On the other hand, inspired by the property, we put forward a formula for estimating boomerang cluster probabilities. Furthermore, we introduce the first model to search for boomerang distinguishers with good cluster probabilities. Applying the model to CRAFT, we obtain 9-round and 10-round boomerang distinguishers with a higher probability than that of previous works