07021 Abstracts Collection -- Symmetric Cryptography

From .. to .., the Dagstuhl Seminar 07021 ``Symmetric Cryptography\u27\u27 automatically was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Survey and Benchmark of Block Ciphers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Cryptographic algorithms play an important role in the security architecture of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Choosing the most storage- and energy-efficient block cipher is essential, due to the facts that these networks are meant to operate without human intervention for a long period of time with little energy supply, and that available storage is scarce on these sensor nodes. However, to our knowledge, no systematic work has been done in this area so far.We construct an evaluation framework in which we first identify the candidates of block ciphers suitable for WSNs, based on existing literature and authoritative recommendations. For evaluating and assessing these candidates, we not only consider the security properties but also the storage- and energy-efficiency of the candidates. Finally, based on the evaluation results, we select the most suitable ciphers for WSNs, namely Skipjack, MISTY1, and Rijndael, depending on the combination of available memory and required security (energy efficiency being implicit). In terms of operation mode, we recommend Output Feedback Mode for pairwise links but Cipher Block Chaining for group communications

Contributions to Confidentiality and Integrity Algorithms for 5G

The confidentiality and integrity algorithms in cellular networks protect the transmission of user and signaling data over the air between users and the network, e.g., the base stations. There are three standardised cryptographic suites for confidentiality and integrity protection in 4G, which are based on the AES, SNOW 3G, and ZUC primitives, respectively. These primitives are used for providing a 128-bit security level and are usually implemented in hardware, e.g., using IP (intellectual property) cores, thus can be quite efficient. When we come to 5G, the innovative network architecture and high-performance demands pose new challenges to security. For the confidentiality and integrity protection, there are some new requirements on the underlying cryptographic algorithms. Specifically, these algorithms should: 1) provide 256 bits of security to protect against attackers equipped with quantum computing capabilities; and 2) provide at least 20 Gbps (Gigabits per second) speed in pure software environments, which is the downlink peak data rate in 5G. The reason for considering software environments is that the encryption in 5G will likely be moved to the cloud and implemented in software. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate existing algorithms in 4G, checking if they can satisfy the 5G requirements in terms of security and speed, and possibly propose new dedicated algorithms targeting these goals. This is the motivation of this thesis, which focuses on the confidentiality and integrity algorithms for 5G. The results can be summarised as follows.1. We investigate the security of SNOW 3G under 256-bit keys and propose two linear attacks against it with complexities 2172 and 2177, respectively. These cryptanalysis results indicate that SNOW 3G cannot provide the full 256-bit security level. 2. We design some spectral tools for linear cryptanalysis and apply these tools to investigate the security of ZUC-256, the 256-bit version of ZUC. We propose a distinguishing attack against ZUC-256 with complexity 2236, which is 220 faster than exhaustive key search. 3. We design a new stream cipher called SNOW-V in response to the new requirements for 5G confidentiality and integrity protection, in terms of security and speed. SNOW-V can provide a 256-bit security level and achieve a speed as high as 58 Gbps in software based on our extensive evaluation. The cipher is currently under evaluation in ETSI SAGE (Security Algorithms Group of Experts) as a promising candidate for 5G confidentiality and integrity algorithms. 4. We perform deeper cryptanalysis of SNOW-V to ensure that two common cryptanalysis techniques, guess-and-determine attacks and linear cryptanalysis, do not apply to SNOW-V faster than exhaustive key search. 5. We introduce two minor modifications in SNOW-V and propose an extreme performance variant, called SNOW-Vi, in response to the feedback about SNOW-V that some use cases are not fully covered. SNOW-Vi covers more use cases, especially some platforms with less capabilities. The speeds in software are increased by 50% in average over SNOW-V and can be up to 92 Gbps.Besides these works on 5G confidentiality and integrity algorithms, the thesis is also devoted to local pseudorandom generators (PRGs). 6. We investigate the security of local PRGs and propose two attacks against some constructions instantiated on the P5 predicate. The attacks improve existing results with a large gap and narrow down the secure parameter regime. We also extend the attacks to other local PRGs instantiated on general XOR-AND and XOR-MAJ predicates and provide some insight in the choice of safe parameters

On the Design and Analysis of Stream Ciphers

This thesis presents new cryptanalysis results for several different stream cipher constructions. In addition, it also presents two new stream ciphers, both based on the same design principle. The first attack is a general attack targeting a nonlinear combiner. A new class of weak feedback polynomials for linear feedback shift registers is identified. By taking samples corresponding to the linear recurrence relation, it is shown that if the feedback polynomial has taps close together an adversary to take advantage of this by considering the samples in a vector form. Next, the self-shrinking generator and the bit-search generator are analyzed. Both designs are based on irregular decimation. For the self-shrinking generator, it is shown how to recover the internal state knowing only a few keystream bits. The complexity of the attack is similar to the previously best known but uses a negligible amount of memory. An attack requiring a large keystream segment is also presented. It is shown to be asymptotically better than all previously known attacks. For the bit-search generator, an algorithm that recovers the internal state is given as well as a distinguishing attack that can be very efficient if the feedback polynomial is not carefully chosen. Following this, two recently proposed stream cipher designs, Pomaranch and Achterbahn, are analyzed. Both stream ciphers are designed with small hardware complexity in mind. For Pomaranch Version 2, based on an improvement of previous analysis of the design idea, a key recovery attack is given. Also, for all three versions of Pomaranch, a distinguishing attack is given. For Achterbahn, it is shown how to recover the key of the latest version, known as Achterbahn-128/80. The last part of the thesis introduces two new stream cipher designs, namely Grain and Grain-128. The ciphers are designed to be very small in hardware. They also have the distinguishing feature of allowing users to increase the speed of the ciphers by adding extra hardware

The Inverse S-Box, Non-linear Polynomial Relations and Cryptanalysis of Block Ciphers

Abstract. This paper is motivated by the design of AES. We consider a broader question of cryptanalysis of block ciphers having very good non-linearity and diffusion. Can we expect anyway, to attacks such ciphers, clearly designed to render hopeless the main classical attacks? Recently a lot of attention have been drawn to the existence of multivariate algebraic relations for AES (and other) S-boxes. Then, if the XSL-type algebraic attacks on block ciphers [11] are shown to work well, the answer would be positive. In this paper we show that the answer is certainly positive for many other constructions of ciphers. This is not due to an algebraic attack, but to new types of generalised linear cryptanalysis, highly-nonlinear in flavour. We present several constructions of somewhat special practical block ciphers, seemingly satisfying all the design criteria of AES and using similar S-boxes, and yet being extremely weak. They can be generalised, and evolve into general attacks that can be applied- potentially- to any block cipher. Key Words: block ciphers, AES, Rijndael, interpolation attack on block ciphers, fractional transformations, homographic functions, multivariate equations