International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Fully homomorphic encryption provides a way to perform computations in a privacy preserving manner. However, despite years of optimization, modern methods may still be too computationally expensive for devices limited by speed or memory constraints. A paradigm that may bridge this gap consists of transciphering: as fully homomorphic schemes can perform most computations obliviously, they can also execute the decryption circuit of any conventional block or stream cipher. Hence, less powerful systems may continue to encrypt their data using classical ciphers that may offer hardware support (e.g., AES) and outsourcing the task of transforming the ciphertexts into their homomorphic equivalent to more powerful systems. In this work, we advance transciphering methods that leverage accumulator-based schemes such as Torus-FHE (TFHE) or FHEW. To this end, we propose a novel method to homomorphically evaluate look-up tables in a setting in which encrypted digits are provided on base 2. At a high level, our method relies on the fact that functions with binary range, i.e., mapping values to {0, 1}, can be evaluated at the same computational cost as negacyclic functions, relying only on the default functionality of accumulator based schemes. To test our algorithm, we implement the AES-128 encryption circuit in OPENFHE and report timings of 67 s for a single block, which is 25% faster than the state of the art and in general, up to 300% faster than other recent works. Furthermore, we achieve this speedup without relying on an instantiation that leverages a power of 2 modulus and can exploit the natural modulo arithmetic of modern processors.

Masking has emerged as a widely adopted countermeasure against side-channel attacks. However, the implementation of masking schemes faces several challenges, including hardware area, latency and the overhead associated with fresh randomness generation. To eliminate the implementation cost caused by fresh randomness, Shahmirzadi et al. introduced a methodology for constructing 2-share first-order masking schemes without randomness at CHES 2021. In this work, we extend Shahmirzadi et al.’s method to find masked implementations for more S-boxes and further reduce the hardware overhead. We propose the concept of a non-linear compression layer, a comprehensive share assignment strategy based on a linear compression layer, and corresponding optimization techniques. Based on these techniques, we construct the first randomness-free first-order masking schemes for the PRINCE S-box and its inverse, reduce the hardware overhead of masking schemes for multiple S-boxes, and design new masking-friendly S-boxes. Particularly for the SKINNY S-box, the reduction is 21% and 15% in area and power consumption, respectively. To validate the security of masked implementations, we not only employ the automated tools SILVER and PROLEAD but also conduct FPGA-based experiments.

Quantum computers hold the potential to solve problems that are intractable for classical computers, thereby driving increased interest in the development of new cryptanalytic ciphers. In NIST's post-quantum standardization process, the security categories are defined by the costs of quantum key search against AES. However, the cost estimates provided by Grassl et al. for the search are high. NIST has acknowledged that these initial classifications should be approached cautiously, since the costs of the most advanced attacks can be significantly reduced. Therefore, accurate resource estimations are crucial for evaluating the security of ciphers against quantum adversaries. This paper presents a set of generic techniques for implementing AES quantum oracles, which are essential for quantum attacks such as Grover's algorithms. Firstly, we introduce the mixing-XOR technique to reuse the ancilla qubits. At ASIACRYPT 2022, Huang et al. proposed an S-box structure with 120 ancilla qubits. We are able to reduce the number of ancilla qubits to 83 without increasing the T-depth. Secondly, we propose the combined pipeline architecture with the share technique to combine the S-box and its reverse, which achieves it with only 98 ancilla qubits, resulting in a significant reduction of 59% compared to the independent structure. Thirdly, we use a general algorithm to determine the depth of quantum circuits, searching for the in-place circuit of AES MixColumns with depth 16. Applying these improvements, we achieve the lower quantum depth of AES circuits, obtaining more precise resource estimates for Grover's algorithm. For AES-128, -192, and -256, we only require the depth of 730, 876, and 1,018, respectively. Recently, the community has also focused on the trade-off of the time and space cost of quantum circuits for AES. In this regard, we present quantum implementations of AES circuits with a lower DW-cost on the zig-zag architecture. Compared with the circuit proposed by Huang et al., the DW-cost is reduced by 35%.

Structure-preserving signatures (SPS) are an important building block for privacy-preserving cryptographic primitives, such as electronic cash, anonymous credentials, and delegatable anonymous credentials. In this work, we introduce the first threshold structure-preserving signature scheme (TSPS). This enables multiple parties to jointly sign a message, resulting in a standard, single-party SPS signature, and can thus be used as a replacement for applications based on SPS. We begin by defining and constructing SPS for indexed messages, which are messages defined relative to a unique index. We prove its security in the random oracle model under a variant of the generalized Pointcheval-Sanders assumption (PS). Moreover, we generalize this scheme to an indexed multi-message SPS for signing vectors of indexed messages, which we prove secure under the same assumption. We then formally define the notion of a TSPS and propose a construction based on our indexed multi-message SPS. Our TSPS construction is fully non-interactive, meaning that signers simply output partial signatures without communicating with the other signers. Additionally, signatures are short: they consist of 2 group elements and require 2 pairing product equations to verify. We prove the security of our TSPS under the security of our indexed multi-message SPS scheme. Finally, we show that our TSPS may be used as a drop-in replacement for UC-secure Threshold-Issuance Anonymous Credential (TIAC) schemes, such as Coconut, without the overhead of the Fischlin transform.

GIFT-64 is a 64-bit block cipher with a 128-bit key that is more lightweight than PRESENT. This paper provides a detailed analysis of GIFT-64 against differential and linear attacks. Our work complements automatic search methods for the best differential and linear characteristics with a careful manual analysis. This hybrid approach leads to new insights. In the differential setting, we theoretically explain the existence of differential characteristics with two active S-boxes per round and derive some novel properties of these characteristics. Furthermore, we prove that all optimal differential characteristics of GIFT-64 covering more than seven rounds must activate two S-boxes per round. We can construct all optimal characteristics by hand. In parallel to the work in the differential setting, we conduct a similar analysis in the linear setting. However, unlike the clear view in differential setting, the optimal linear characteristics of GIFT-64 must have at least one round activating only one S-box. Moreover, with the assistance of automatic searching methods, we identify 24 GIFT-64 variants achieving better resistance against differential attack while maintaining a similar security level against a linear attack. Since the new variants strengthen GIFT-64 against statistical cryptanalysis, we claim that the number of rounds could be reduced from 28 to 26 for the variants. This observation enables us to create a cipher with lower energy consumption than GIFT-64. Similarly to the case in GIFT-64, we do not claim any related-key security for the round-reduced variant as this is not relevant for most applications.

Since the first white-box implementation of AES published twenty years ago, no significant progress has been made in the design of secure implementations against an attacker with full control of the device. Designing white-box implementations of existing block ciphers is a challenging problem, as all proposals have been broken. Only two white-box design strategies have been published this far: the CEJO framework, which can only be applied to ciphers with small S-boxes, and self-equivalence encodings, which were only applied to AES. In this work we propose implicit implementations, a new design of white-box implementations based on implicit functions, and we show that current generic attacks that break CEJO or self-equivalence implementations are not successful against implicit implementations. The generation and the security of implicit implementations are related to the self-equivalences of the non-linear layer of the cipher, and we propose a new method to obtain self-equivalences based on the CCZ-equivalence. We implemented this method and many other functionalities in a new open-source tool BoolCrypt, which we used to obtain for the first time affine, linear, and even quadratic self-equivalences of the permuted modular addition. Using the implicit framework and these self-equivalences, we describe for the first time a practical white-box implementation of a generic Addition-Rotation-XOR (ARX) cipher, and we provide an open-source tool to easily generate implicit implementations of ARX ciphers.

Cube attacks exploit the algebraic properties of symmetric ciphers by recovering a special polynomial, the superpoly, and subsequently the secret key. When the algebraic normal forms of the corresponding Boolean functions are not available, the division property based approach allows to recover the exact superpoly in a clever way. However, the computational cost to recover the superpoly becomes prohibitive as the number of rounds of the cipher increases. For example, the nested monomial predictions (NMP) proposed at ASIACRYPT 2021 stuck at round 845 for \trivium. To alleviate the bottleneck of the NMP technique, i.e., the unsolvable model due to the excessive number of monomial trails, we shift our focus to the so-called valuable terms of a specific middle round that contribute to the superpoly. Two new techniques are introduced, namely, Non-zero Bit-based Division Property (NBDP) and Core Monomial Prediction (CMP), both of which result in a simpler MILP model compared to the MILP model of MP. It can be shown that the CMP technique offers a substantial improvement over the monomial prediction technique in terms of computational complexity of recovering valuable terms. Combining the divide-and-conquer strategy with these two new techniques, we catch the valuable terms more effectively and thus avoid wasting computational resources on intermediate terms contributing nothing to the superpoly. As an illustration of the power of our techniques, we apply our framework to \trivium, \grain, \kreyvium and \acorn. As a result, the computational cost of earlier attacks can be significantly reduced and the exact ANFs of the superpolies for 846-, 847- and 848-round \trivium, 192-round \grain, 895-round \kreyvium and 776-round \acorn can be recovered in practical time, even though the superpoly of 848-round \trivium contains over 500 million terms; this corresponds to respectively 3, 1, 1 and 1 rounds more than the previous best results. Moreover, by investigating the internal properties of M\"obius transformation, we show how to perform key recovery using superpolies involving full key bits, which leads to the best key recovery attacks on the targeted ciphers.

This paper documents a practical security evaluation of the Tesla Model X keyless entry system. In contrast to other works, the keyless entry system analysed in this paper employs secure symmetric-key and public-key cryptographic primitives implemented by a Common Criteria certified Secure Element. We document the internal workings of this system, covering the key fob, the body control module and the pairing protocol. Additionally, we detail our reverse engineering techniques and document several security issues. The identified issues in the key fob firmware update mechanism and the key fob pairing protocol allow us to bypass all of the cryptographic security measures put in place. To demonstrate the practical impact of our research we develop a fully remote Proof-of-Concept attack that allows to gain access to the vehicle’s interior in a matter of minutes and pair a modified key fob, allowing to drive off. Our attack is not a relay attack, as our new key fob allows us to start the car anytime anywhere. Finally, we provide an analysis of the update performed by Tesla to mitigate our findings. Our work highlights how the increased complexity and connectivity of vehicular systems can result in a larger and easier to exploit attack surface.

A growing number of lightweight block ciphers are proposed for environments such as the Internet of Things. An important contribution to the reduced implementation cost is a block length n of 64 or 96 bits rather than 128 bits. As a consequence, encryption modes and message authentication code (MAC) algorithms require security beyond the 2^{n/2} birthday bound. This paper provides an extensive treatment of MAC algorithms that offer beyond birthday bound PRF security for both nonce-respecting and nonce-misusing adversaries. We study constructions that use two block cipher calls, one universal hash function call and an arbitrary number of XOR operations. We start with the separate problem of generically identifying all possible secure n-to-n-bit pseudorandom functions (PRFs) based on two block cipher calls. The analysis shows that the existing constructions EDM, SoP, and EDMD are the only constructions of this kind that achieve beyond birthday bound security. Subsequently we deliver an exhaustive treatment of MAC algorithms, where the outcome of a universal hash function evaluation on the message may be entered at any point in the computation of the PRF. We conclude that there are a total amount of nine schemes that achieve beyond birthday bound security, and a tenth construction that cannot be proven using currently known proof techniques. For these former nine MAC algorithms, three constructions achieve optimal n-bit security in the nonce-respecting setting, but are completely insecure if the nonce is reused. The remaining six constructions have 3n/4-bit security in the nonce-respecting setting, and only four out of these six constructions still achieve beyond the birthday bound security in the case of nonce misuse.

A multi-forkcipher (MFC) is a generalization of the forkcipher (FC) primitive introduced by Andreeva et al. at ASIACRYPT’19. An MFC is a tweakable cipher that computes s output blocks for a single input block, with s arbitrary but fixed. We define the MFC security in the ind-prtmfp notion as indistinguishability from s tweaked permutations. Generalizing tweakable block ciphers (TBCs, s = 1), as well as forkciphers (s = 2), MFC lends itself well to building simple-to-analyze modes of operation that support any number of cipher output blocks.Our main contribution is the generic CTR encryption mode GCTR that makes parallel calls to an MFC to encrypt a message M. We analyze the set of all 36 “simple and natural” GCTR variants under the nivE security notion by Peyrin and Seurin rom CRYPTO’16. Our proof method makes use of an intermediate abstraction called tweakable CTR (TCTR) that captures the core security properties of GCTR common to all variants, making their analyses easier. Our results show that many of the schemes achieve from well beyond birthday bound (BBB) to full n-bit security under nonce respecting adversaries and some even BBB and close to full n-bit security in the face of realistic nonce misuse conditions.We finally present an efficiency comparison of GCTR using ForkSkinny (an MFC with s = 2) with the traditional CTR and the more recent CTRT modes, both are instantiated with the SKINNY TBC. Our estimations show that any GCTR variant with ForkSkinny can achieve an efficiency advantage of over 20% for moderately long messages, illustrating that the use of an efficient MFC with s ≥ 2 brings a clear speed-up.

At RWC 2019 we presented a black-box security evaluation of the the keyless entry system employed within the Tesla Model S [WMA+19]. Our analysis revealed that these high-end vehicles could be stolen in a matter of seconds, this was made possible by an inadequate proprietary cipher. Tesla released a second iteration of this key fob, upgrading to a newer version of the proprietary cipher. We later demonstrated that this new version was in fact vulnerable to a downgrade attack [WVdHG+20]. In response Tesla released an over-the-airsoftware update which allowed users to self service their key fob. In contrast, this presentation will cover a security evaluation of the keyless entry system used in the Tesla Model X. This modern-day system was developed in-house by Tesla. The key fob uses Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate with the car, and both the key fob and car use a Common Criteria EAL5+ certified secure element to perform security critical operations. Even though this system was clearly designed with security in mind we demonstrate how a pair of vulnerabilities can be combined to completely bypass the secure public-key and symmetric-key cryptograhpic primitives that are used within this system. Therefore,this talk could serve as a yearly reminder of Shamir’s third law of security which states that cryptography is typically bypassed, not penetrated. To demonstrate the practical impact of our findings we implement a proof-of-concept attack, demonstrating that we could gain interior access to, and drive off with a Tesla Model X in a matter of minutes. The only prerequisite for an attacker is to be within five meters of the legitimate key fob for a few seconds. We want to stress that this is not a classical relay attack, our findings result in permanent access to the vehicle similar to any legitimate key fob. During this talk we will describe our reverse engineering efforts covering both the keyfob as well as the body control module located inside the vehicle. We will uncover the identified vulnerabilities and will showcase a proof-of-concept attack allowing an adversary to drive off with the car in a matter of minutes. We will provide insight into the internal workings of this system from both the key fob and vehicle side as well as the procedure used by Tesla service centers to pair a key fob to the car. This research once again demonstrates the difficulties faced, even by experienced security professionals, to implement a real-world system securely. By doing so we also demonstrate the importance of security evaluation methods, secure building blocks that are impossible or difficult to implement incorrectly, and secure example code provided by silicon vendors.

Car manufacturers deploy vehicle immobiliser systems in order to prevent car theft. However, in many cases the underlying cryptographic primitives used to authenticate a transponder are proprietary in nature and thus not open to public scrutiny. In this paper we publish the proprietary Texas Instruments DST80 cipher used in immobilisers of several manufacturers. Additionally, we expose serious flaws in immobiliser systems of major car manufacturers such as Toyota, Kia, Hyundai and Tesla. Specifically, by voltage glitching the firmware protection mechanisms of the microcontroller, we extracted the firmware from several immobiliser ECUs and reverse engineered the key diversification schemes employed within. We discovered that Kia and Hyundai immobiliser keys have only three bytes of entropy and that Toyota only relies on publicly readable information such as the transponder serial number and three constants to generate cryptographic keys. Furthermore, we present several practical attacks which can lead to recovering the full 80-bit cryptographic key in a matter of seconds or permanently disabling the transponder. Finally, even without key management or configuration issues, we demonstrate how an attacker can recover the cryptographic key using a profiled side-channel attack. We target the key loading procedure and investigate the practical applicability in the context of portability. Our work once again highlights the issues automotive vendors face in implementing cryptography securely.

This work provides a critical review of the paper by Zaid et al. titled “Methodology for Efficient CNN Architectures in Profiling attacks”, which was published in TCHES Volume 2020, Issue 1. This work studies the design of CNN networks to perform side-channel analysis of multiple implementations of the AES for embedded devices. Based on the authors’ code and public data sets, we were able to cross-check their results and perform a thorough analysis. We correct multiple misconceptions by carefully inspecting different elements of the model architectures proposed by Zaid et al. First, by providing a better understanding on the internal workings of these models, we can trivially reduce their number of parameters on average by 52%, while maintaining a similar performance. Second, we demonstrate that the convolutional filter’s size is not strictly related to the amount of misalignment in the traces. Third, we show that increasing the filter size and the number of convolutions actually improves the performance of a network. Our work demonstrates once again that reproducibility and review are important pillars of academic research. Therefore, we provide the reader with an online Python notebook which allows to reproduce some of our experiments1 and additional example code is made available on Github.2

The security of immobiliser and Remote Keyless Entry systems has been extensively studied over many years. Passive Keyless Entry and Start systems, which are currently deployed in luxury vehicles, have not received much attention besides relay attacks. In this work we fully reverse engineer a Passive Keyless Entry and Start system and perform a thorough analysis of its security.Our research reveals several security weaknesses. Specifically, we document the use of an inadequate proprietary cipher using 40-bit keys, the lack of mutual authentication in the challenge-response protocol, no firmware readout protection features enabled and the absence of security partitioning.In order to validate our findings, we implement a full proof of concept attack allowing us to clone a Tesla Model S key fob in a matter of seconds with low cost commercial off the shelf equipment. Our findings most likely apply to other manufacturers of luxury vehicles including McLaren, Karma and Triumph motorcycles as they all use the same system developed by Pektron.

Preface to Volume 2017, Issue 1

We present a length doubler, LDT, that turns an n-bit tweakable block cipher into an efficient and secure cipher that can encrypt any bit string of length [n..2n − 1]. The LDT mode is simple, uses only two cryptographic primitive calls (while prior work needs at least four), and is a strong length-preserving pseudorandom permutation if the underlying tweakable block ciphers are strong tweakable pseudorandom permutations. We demonstrate that LDT can be used to neatly turn an authenticated encryption scheme for integral data into a mode for arbitrary-length data.