SoK: Security Evaluation of SBox-Based Block Ciphers

Abstract

Cryptanalysis of block ciphers is an active and important research area with an extensive volume of literature. For this work, we focus on SBox-based ciphers, as they are widely used and cover a large class of block ciphers. While there have been prior works that have consolidated attacks on block ciphers, they usually focus on describing and listing the attacks. Moreover, the methods for evaluating a cipher\u27s security are often ad hoc, differing from cipher to cipher, as attacks and evaluation techniques are developed along the way. As such, we aim to organise the attack literature, as well as the work on security evaluation. In this work, we present a systematization of cryptanalysis of SBox-based block ciphers focusing on three main areas: (1) Evaluation of block ciphers against standard cryptanalytic attacks; (2) Organisation and relationships between various attacks; (3) Comparison of the evaluation and attacks on existing ciphers