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Can a Differential Attack Work for an Arbitrarily Large Number of Rounds?

Courtois, NT; Quisquater, JJ; (2021) Can a Differential Attack Work for an Arbitrarily Large Number of Rounds? In: Hong, D, (ed.) Information Security and Cryptology – ICISC 2020. ICISC 2020. (pp. pp. 157-181). Springer: Cham, Switzerland. Green open access

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Abstract

Differential cryptanalysis is one of the oldest attacks on block ciphers. Can anything new be discovered on this topic? A related question is that of backdoors and hidden properties. There is substantial amount of research on how Boolean functions affect the security of ciphers, and comparatively, little research, on how block cipher wiring can be very special or abnormal. In this article we show a strong type of anomaly: where the complexity of a differential attack does not grow exponentially as the number of rounds increases. It will grow initially, and later will be lower bounded by a constant. At the end of the day the vulnerability is an ordinary single differential attack on the full state. It occurs due to the existence of a hidden polynomial invariant. We conjecture that this type of anomaly is not easily detectable if the attacker has limited resources.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Can a Differential Attack Work for an Arbitrarily Large Number of Rounds?
ISBN-13: 9783030688899
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-68890-5_9
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68890-5_9
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Feistel ciphers, Boolean functions, Multivariate polynomials, T-310, Generalized linear cryptanalysis, Polynomial invariants, Hidden polynomial problems, Annihilators, Markov ciphers, k-normality, Algebraic cryptanalysis
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10133641
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