International Association for Cryptologic Research

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MAYO Key Recovery by Fixing Vinegar Seeds

Authors:
Sönke Jendral , KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Elena Dubrova , KTH Royal Institute of Technology
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DOI: 10.62056/ab0ljbkrz
URL: https://cic.iacr.org/p/1/4/17
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Abstract:

As the industry prepares for the transition to post-quantum secure public key cryptographic algorithms, vulnerability analysis of their implementations is gaining importance. A theoretically secure cryptographic algorithm should also be able to withstand the challenges of physical attacks in real-world environments. MAYO is a candidate in the ongoing second round of the NIST post-quantum standardization process for selecting additional digital signature schemes. This paper demonstrates three first-order single-execution fault injection attacks on the official MAYO implementation on the ARM Cortex-M4. By using voltage glitching to disrupt the computation of the vinegar seed during the signature generation, we enable the recovery of the secret key directly from the faulty signatures. Our experimental results show that the success rates of the fault attacks in a single execution are 36%, 82%, and 99%, respectively. They emphasize the importance of developing countermeasures against fault attacks prior to the widespread deployment of post-quantum algorithms like MAYO.

BibTeX
@article{cic-2025-34910,
  title={MAYO Key Recovery by Fixing Vinegar Seeds},
  journal={cic},
  publisher={International Association for Cryptologic Research},
  volume={1, Issue 4},
  url={https://cic.iacr.org/p/1/4/17},
  doi={10.62056/ab0ljbkrz},
  author={Sönke Jendral and Elena Dubrova},
  year=2025
}