International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Message Authentication Codes (MACs) are ubiquitous primitives deployed in multiple flavours through standards such as HMAC, CMAC, GMAC, LightMAC and many others. Its versatility makes it an essential building block in applications necessitating message authentication and integrity check, in authentication protocols, authenticated encryption schemes, or as a pseudorandom or key derivation function. Its usage in this variety of settings makes it susceptible to a broad range of attack scenarios. The latest attack trends leverage a lack of commitment or context-discovery security in AEAD schemes and these attacks are mainly due to the weakness in the underlying MAC part. However, these new attack models have been scarcely analyzed for MACs themselves. This paper provides a thorough treatment of MACs committing and context-discovery security. We reveal that commitment and context-discovery security of MACs have their own interest by highlighting real-world vulnerable scenarios. We formalize the required security notions for MACs, and analyze the security of standardized MACs for these notions. Additionally, as a constructive application, we analyze generic AEAD composition and provide simple and efficient ways to build committing and context-discovery secure AEADs.

Authenticated Encryption (AE) modes of operation based on Tweakable Block Ciphers (TBC) usually measure efficiency in the number of calls to the underlying primitive per message block. On the one hand, many existing solutions reach a primitive-rate of 1, meaning that each n-bit block of message asymptotically needs a single call to the TBC with output length n. On the other hand, while these modes look optimal in a blackbox setting, they become less attractive when leakage comes into play, since all these calls must then be equally well protected to maintain security. Leakage-resistant modes improve this situation, by generating ephemeral keys every constant number of calls. However, rekeying is inherently suboptimal in primitive-rate, since a TBC call can only be used either to refresh a key or to encrypt a block. Even worse, existing solutions achieving almost n bits of security for n-bit secret keys have at most a primitive-rate 2/3. Hence the question: Can we design a highly-secure TBC-based rekeying mode with “nearly optimal” primitive-rate? We answer this question positively with Multiplex, a new mode that has primitive-rate d/(d + 1) given a TBC with a dn-bit tweak. Multiplex achieves n − log2(dn) bits of security for both (i) misuse-resilience CCA confidentiality security in the blackbox setting and (ii) Ciphertext Integrity with Misuse-resistant and unbounded Leakage in encryption and decryption (CIML2). It also provides (iii) confidentiality with leakage up to the birthday bound. Furthermore, Multiplex can run d + 1 calls in parallel in each iteration. The combination of these features gives a mode of operation that inherits most of the good implementation features and flexibility of a sponge construction – therefore paving the way towards sound comparisons between TBC-based and permutation-based AE.

Security against side-channels and faults is a must for the deployment of embedded cryptography. A wide body of research has investigated solutions to secure implementations against these attacks at different abstraction levels. Yet, to a large extent, current solutions focus on one or the other threat. In this paper, we initiate a mode-level study of cryptographic primitives that can ensure security in a (new and practically-motivated) adversarial model combining leakage and faults. Our goal is to identify constructions that do not require a uniform protection of all their operations against both attack vectors. For this purpose, we first introduce a versatile and intuitive model to capture leakage and faults. We then show that a MAC from Asiacrypt 2021 natively enables a leveled implementation for fault resilience where only its underlying tweakable block cipher must be protected, if only the tag verification can be faulted. We finally describe two approaches to amplify security for fault resilience when also the tag generation can be faulted. One is based on iteration and requires the adversary to inject increasingly large faults to succeed. The other is based on randomness and allows provable security against differential faults.

The sum of two $n$-bit pseudorandom permutations is known to behave like a pseudorandom function with $n$ bits of security. A recent line of research has investigated the security of two public $n$-bit permutations and its degree of indifferentiability. Mandal et al. (INDOCRYPT 2010) proved $2n/3$-bit security, Mennink and Preneel (ACNS 2015) pointed out a non-trivial flaw in their analysis and re-proved $2n/3$-bit security. Bhattacharya and Nandi (EUROCRYPT 2018) eventually improved the result to $n$-bit security. Recently, Gunsing at CRYPTO 2022 already observed that a proof technique used in this line of research only holds for sequential indifferentiability. We revisit the line of research in detail, and observe that the strongest bound of $n$-bit security has two other serious issues in the reasoning, the first one is actually the same non-trivial flaw that was present in the work of Mandal et al., while the second one discards biases in the randomness influenced by the distinguisher. More concretely, we introduce two attacks that show limited potential of different approaches. We (i) show that the latter issue that discards biases only holds up to $2^{3n/4}$ queries, and (ii) perform a differentiability attack against their simulator in $2^{5n/6}$ queries. On the upside, we revive the result of Mennink and Preneel and show $2n/3$-bit regular indifferentiability security of the sum of public permutations.

We consider the design of a tweakable block cipher from a block cipher whose inputs and outputs are of size n bits. The main goal is to achieve 2n security with a large tweak (i.e., more than n bits). Previously, Mennink at FSE’15 and Wang et al. at Asiacrypt’16 proposed constructions that can achieve 2n security. Yet, these constructions can have a tweak size up to n-bit only. As evident from recent research, a tweakable block cipher with a large tweak is generally helpful as a building block for modes of operation, typical applications including MACs, authenticated encryption, leakage-resistant cryptography and full-disk encryption.We begin with how to design a tweakable block cipher with 2n-bit tweak and n-bit security from two block cipher calls. For this purpose, we do an exhaustive search for tweakable block ciphers with 2n-bit tweaks from two block cipher calls, and show that all of them suffer from birthday-bound attacks. Next, we investigate the possibility to design a tweakable block cipher with 2n-bit tweak and n-bit security from three block cipher calls. We start with some conditions to build such a tweakable block cipher and propose a natural construction, called G̃1, that likely meets them. After inspection, we find a weakness in G̃1 which leads to a birthday-bound attack. Based on G̃1, we then propose another construction, called G̃2, that can avoid this weakness. We finally prove that G̃2 can achieve n-bit security with 2n-bit tweak.

At CRYPTO'18, Datta et al. proposed nPolyMAC and proved the security up to 2^{2n/3} authentication queries and 2^{n} verification queries. At EUROCRYPT'19, Dutta et al. proposed CWC+ and showed the security up to 2^{2n/3} queries. At FSE'19, Datta et al. proposed PolyMAC and its key-reduced variant 2k-PolyMAC, and showed the security up to 2^{2n/3} queries. This security bound was then improved by Kim et al. (EUROCRYPT'20) and Datta et al (FSE'23) respectively to 2^{3n/4} and in the multi-user setting. At FSE'20, Chakraborti et al. proposed PDM*MAC and 1k-PDM*MAC and showed the security up to 2^{2n/3} queries. Recently, Chen et al. proposed nEHtM_p^+ and showed the security up to 2^{2n/3} queries. In this paper, we show forgery attacks on nPolyMAC, CWC+, PolyMAC, 2k-PolyMAC, PDM*MAC, 1k-PDM*MAC and nEHtM_p^+. Our attacks exploit some vulnerability in the underlying polynomial hash function, and (i) require only one authentication query and one verification query; (ii) are nonce-respecting; (iii) succeed with probability 1. Thus, our attacks disprove the provable high security claims of these schemes. We then revisit their security analyses and identify what went wrong. Finally, we propose two solutions that can restore the beyond-birthday-bound security.

This paper introduces and analyzes Triplex, a leakage-resistant mode of operation based on Tweakable Block Ciphers (TBCs) with 2n-bit tweaks. Triplex enjoys beyond-birthday ciphertext integrity in the presence of encryption and decryption leakage in a liberal model where all intermediate computations are leaked in full and only two TBC calls operating a long-term secret are protected with implementationlevel countermeasures. It provides beyond-birthday confidentiality guarantees without leakage, and standard confidentiality guarantees with leakage for a single-pass mode embedding a re-keying process for the bulk of its computations (i.e., birthday confidentiality with encryption leakage under a bounded leakage assumption). Triplex improves leakage-resistant modes of operation relying on TBCs with n-bit tweaks when instantiated with large-tweak TBCs like Deoxys-TBC (a CAESAR competition laureate) or Skinny (used by the Romulus finalist of the NIST lightweight crypto competition). Its security guarantees are maintained in the multi-user setting.

3kf9 is a three-key CBC-type MAC that enhances the standardized integrity algorithm f9 (3GPP-MAC). It has beyond-birthday-bound security and is expected to be a possible candidate in constrained environments when instantiated with lightweight blockciphers. Two variants 2kf9 and 1kf9 were proposed to reduce key size for efficiency, but recently, Leurent et al. (CRYPTO'18) and Shen et al. (CRYPTO'21) pointed out critical flaws on these two variants and invalidated their security proofs with birthday-bound attacks. In this work, we revisit previous constructions of key-reduced variants of 3kf9 and analyze what went wrong in security analyzes. Interestingly, we find that a single doubling at the end can not only fix 2kf9 to go beyond the birthday bound, but also help 1kf9 to go beyond the birthday bound. We then propose two new key-reduced variants of 3kf9, called n2kf9 and n1kf9. By leveraging previous attempts, we prove that n2kf9 is secure up to 2^{2n/3} queries, and prove that n1kf9 is secure up to 2^{2n/3} queries when the message space is prefix-free. We also provide beyond-birthday analysis of n2kf9 in the multi-user setting. Note that compared to EMAC and CBC-MAC, the additional cost to provide a higher security guarantee is expected to be minimal for n2kf9 and n1kf9. It only requires one additional blockcipher call and one doubling.

Double-block Hash-then-Sum (\textsf{DbHtS}) MACs are a class of MACs that aim for achieving beyond-birthday-bound security, including \textsf{SUM-ECBC}, \textsf{PMAC\_Plus}, \textsf{3kf9} and \textsf{LightMAC\_Plus}. Recently Datta et al. (FSE'19), and then Kim et al. (Eurocrypt'20) prove that \textsf{DbHtS} constructions are secure beyond the birthday bound in the single-user setting. However, by a generic reduction, their results degrade to (or even worse than) the birthday bound in the multi-user setting. In this work, we revisit the security of \textsf{DbHtS} MACs in the multi-user setting. We propose a generic framework to prove beyond-birthday-bound security for \textsf{DbHtS} constructions. We demonstrate the usability of this framework with applications to key-reduced variants of \textsf{DbHtS} MACs, including \textsf{2k-SUM-ECBC}, \textsf{2k-PMAC\_Plus} and \textsf{2k-LightMAC\_Plus}. Our results show that the security of these constructions will not degrade as the number of users grows. On the other hand, our results also indicate that these constructions are secure beyond the birthday bound in both single-user and multi-user setting without additional domain separation, which is used in the prior work to simplify the analysis. Moreover, we find a critical flaw in \textsf{2kf9}, which is proved to be secure beyond the birthday bound by Datta et al. (FSE'19). We can successfully forge a tag with probability 1 without making any queries. We go further to show attacks with birthday-bound complexity on several variants of \textsf{2kf9}.

We revisit the security of various generalized Feistel networks. Concretely, for unbalanced, alternating, type-1, type-2, and type-3 Feistel networks built from random functions, we substantially improve the coupling analyzes of Hoang and Rogaway (CRYPTO 2010). For a tweakable blockcipher-based generalized Feistelnetwork proposed by Coron et al. (TCC 2010), we present a coupling analysis and for the first time show that with enough rounds, it achieves 2n-bit security, and this provides highly secure, double-length tweakable blockciphers.

We study the security of CTR-DRBG, one of NIST’s recommended Pseudorandom Number Generator (PRNG) designs. Recently, Woodage and Shumow (Eurocrypt’ 19), and then Cohney et al. (S&P’ 20) point out some potential vulnerabilities in both NIST specification and common implementations of CTR-DRBG. While these researchers do suggest counter-measures, the security of the patched CTR-DRBG is still questionable. Our work fills this gap, proving that CTR-DRBG satisfies the robustness notion of Dodis et al. (CCS’13), the standard security goal for PRNGs.

ISO/IEC 9797-1 is an international standard for block-cipher-based Message Authentication Code (MAC). The current version ISO/IEC 9797-1:2011 specifies six single-pass CBC-like MAC structures that are capped at the birthday bound security. For a higher security that is beyond-birthday bound, it recommends to use the concatenation combiner of two single-pass MACs. In this paper, we reveal the invalidity of the suggestion, by presenting a birthday bound forgery attack on the concatenation combiner, which is essentially based on Joux’s multi-collision. Notably, our new forgery attack for the concatenation of two MAC Algorithm 1 with padding scheme 2 only requires 3 queries. Moreover, we look for patches by revisiting the development of ISO/IEC 9797-1 with respect to the beyond-birthday bound security. More specifically, we evaluate the XOR combiner of single-pass CBC-like MACs, which was used in previous version of ISO/IEC 9797-1.