What a lovely hat

Indifferentiability is a popular cryptographic paradigm for analyzing the security of ideal objects---both in a classical as well as in a quantum world. It is typically stated in the form of a composable and simulation-based definition, and captures what it means for a construction (e.g., a cryptographic hash function) to be ``as good as'' an ideal object (e.g., a random oracle). Despite its strength, indifferentiability is not known to offer security against pre-processin} attacks in which...

Cryptographic hash functions are said to be the work-horses of modern cryptography. One of the strongest approaches to assess a cryptographic hash function's security is indifferentiability. Informally, indifferentiability measures to what degree the function resembles a random oracle when instantiated with an ideal underlying primitive. However, proving the indifferentiability security of hash functions has been challenging due to complex simulator designs and proof arguments. The Sponge...

The Ascon specification defines among others an encryption scheme offering authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) which is based on a duplex mode of a sponge. With that it is the first of such algorithm selected and about to be standardized by NIST. The sponge size is comparatively small, 320 bits, as expected for lightweight cryptography. With that, the strength of the defined AEAD algorithm is limited to 128 bits. Albeit, the definition of the Ascon AEAD algorithm integrates...

We present a framework for speeding up the search for preimages of candidate one-way functions based on highly biased differential-linear distinguishers. It is naturally applicable to preimage attacks on hash functions. Further, a variant of this framework applied to keyed functions leads to accelerated key-recovery attacks. Interestingly, our technique is able to exploit related-key differential-linear distinguishers in the single-key model without querying the target encryption oracle...

In this audit we started from the security analysis provided in the design documentation of XHash8/12. We extended the analysis in several directions and confirmed the security claims that were made by the designers.

This paper proposes general meet-in-the-middle (MitM) attack frameworks for preimage and collision attacks on hash functions based on (generalized) sponge construction. As the first contribution, our MitM preimage attack framework covers a wide range of sponge-based hash functions, especially those with lower claimed security level for preimage compared to their output size. Those hash functions have been very widely standardized (e.g., Ascon-Hash, PHOTON, etc.), but are rarely studied...

Hash chain based password systems are a useful way to guarantee authentication with one-time passwords. The core idea is specified in RFC 1760 as S/Key. At CCS 2017, Kogan et al. introduced T/Key, an improved password system where one-time passwords are only valid for a limited time period. They proved security of their construction in the random oracle model under a basic modeling of the adversary. In this work, we make various advances in the analysis and instantiation of hash chain based...

Rescue-XLIX is an Arithmetization-Oriented Substitution-Permutation Network over prime fields $\mathbb{F}_p$ which in one full round first applies a SPN based on $x \mapsto x^d$ followed by a SPN based on the inverse power map $x \mapsto x^\frac{1}{d}$. In a recent work, zero-dimensional Gröbner bases for SPN and Poseidon sponge functions have been constructed by utilizing weight orders. Following this approach we construct zero-dimensional Gröbner bases for Rescue-XLIX ciphers and sponge functions.

Sponge hashing is a widely used class of cryptographic hash algorithms which underlies the current international hash function standard SHA-3. In a nutshell, a sponge function takes as input a bit-stream of any length and processes it via a simple iterative procedure: it repeatedly feeds each block of the input into a so-called block function, and then produces a digest by once again iterating the block function on the final output bits. While much is known about the post-quantum security of...

It is known that the sponge construction is tightly indifferentiable from a random oracle up to around $2^{c/2}$ queries, where $c$ is the capacity. In particular, it cannot provide generic security better than half of the underlying permutation size. In this paper, we aim to achieve hash function security beating this barrier. We present a hashing mode based on two $b$-bit permutations named the double sponge. The double sponge can be seen as the sponge embedded within the double block...

In this paper we construct dedicated weight orders $>$ so that a $>$-Gröbner bases of Poseidon can be found via linear transformations for the preimage as well as the CICO problem. In particular, with our Gröbner bases we can exactly compute the $\mathbb{F}_q$-vector space dimension of the quotient space for all possible Poseidon configurations. This in turn resolves previous attempts to assess the security of Poseidon against Gröbner basis attacks, since the vector space dimension...

ZK-SNARKs, a fundamental component of privacy-oriented payment systems, identity protocols, or anonymous voting systems, are advanced cryptographic protocols for verifiable computation: modern SNARKs allow to encode the invariants of a program, expressed as an arithmetic circuit, in an appropriate constraint language from which short, zero-knowledge proofs for correct computations can be constructed. One of the most important computations that is run through SNARK systems is the...

Sponge based constructions have gained significant popularity for designing lightweight authenticated encryption modes. Most of the authenticated ciphers following the Sponge paradigm can be viewed as variations of the Transform-then-permute construction. It is known that a construction following the Transform-then-permute paradigm provides security against any adversary having data complexity $D$ and time complexity $T$ as long as $DT \ll 2^{b-r}$. Here, $b$ represents the size of the...

We present a construction, called Kirby, for building a variable-input-length pseudorandom function (VIL-PRF) from a $b$-bit permutation. For this construction we prove a tight bound of $b/2$ bits of security on the PRF distinguishing advantage in the random permutation model and in the multi-user setting. Similar to full-state keyed sponge/duplex, it supports full-state absorbing and additionally supports full-state squeezing, while the sponge/duplex can squeeze at most $b-c$ bits per...

Authenticated encryption is a cryptographic mechanism that allows communicating parties to protect the confidentiality and integrity of message exchanged over a public channel, provided they share a secret key. Some applications require committing authenticated encryption schemes, a security notion that is not covered by the classical requirements of confidentiality and integrity given a secret key. An authenticated encryption (AE) scheme is committing in the strongest sense when it is...

Sponge paradigm, used in the design of SHA-3, is an alternative hashing technique to the popular Merkle-Damgård paradigm. We revisit the problem of finding $B$-block-long collisions in sponge hash functions in the auxiliary-input random permutation model, in which an attacker gets a piece of $S$-bit advice about the random permutation and makes $T$ (forward or inverse) oracle queries to the random permutation. Recently, significant progress has been made in the Merkle-Damgård setting and...

Hash functions are a crucial component in incrementally verifiable computation (IVC) protocols and applications. Among those, recursive SNARKs and folding schemes require hash functions to be both fast in native CPU computations and compact in algebraic descriptions (constraints). However, neither SHA-2/3 nor newer algebraic constructions, such as Poseidon, achieve both requirements. In this work we overcome this problem in several steps. First, for certain prime field domains we propose a...

Since the announcement of the NIST call for a new lightweight cryptographic standard, a lot of schemes have been proposed in response. Xoodyak is one of these schemes and is among the finalists of the NIST competition with a sponge structure very similar to the Keccak hash function – the winner of the SHA3 NIST competition. In this paper with conditional cube attack technique, we fully recover the key of Xoodyak reduced to 6 and 7 rounds with time complexity resp. 2^{42.58} and 2^{76.003}...

The Ascon cipher suite, offering both authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) and hashing functionality, has recently emerged as the winner of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography (LwC) standardization process. The AEAD schemes within Ascon, namely Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a, have also been previously selected as the preferred lightweight authenticated encryption solutions in the CAESAR competition. In this paper, we present a tight and comprehensive security analysis of the Ascon...

In this brief, we realize different architectural techniques towards improving the performance of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms when implemented as hardware accelerators on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) platform. Having SABER as a case study, we designed a 256-bit wide architecture geared for high-speed cryptographic applications that incorporates smaller and distributed SRAM memory blocks. Moreover, we have adapted the building blocks of SABER to process...

From hashing and commitment schemes to Fiat-Shamir and encryption, hash functions are everywhere in zero-knowledge proofsystems (ZKPs), and minor performance changes in ``vanilla'' implementations can translate in major discrepancies when the hash is processed as a circuit within the proofsystem. Protocol designers have resorted to a number of techniques and custom modes to optimize hash functions for ZKPs settings, but so far without a single established, well-studied construction. To...

We provide security foundations for SAFE, a recently introduced API framework for sponge-based hash functions tailored to prime-field-based protocols. SAFE aims to provide a robust and foolproof interface, has been implemented in the Neptune hash framework and some zero-knowledge proof projects, but currently lacks any security proof. In this work we identify the SAFECore as versatile variant sponge construction underlying SAFE, we prove indifferentiability of SAFECore for all (binary and...

Besides the U.S. NIST standard SHA-3(Keccak), another sponge-based primitive Ascon was selected as the NIST standard for lightweight applications, recently. Exploring the security against attacks on the sponge-based hash functions is very important. At EUROCRYPT 2023, Qin et al. introduced the MitM preimage attack framework and the automatic tools for Keccak, Ascon, and Xoodyak. In this paper, we extend Qin et al.'s MitM attack framework into collision attack and also develop various...

Cryptographic hash functions map data of arbitrary size to a fixed size digest, and are one of the most commonly used cryptographic objects. As it is infeasible to design an individual hash function for every input size, variable-input length hash functions are built by designing and bootstrapping a single fixed-input length function that looks sufficiently random. To prevent trivial preprocessing attacks, applications often require not just a single hash function but rather a family of...

Zero-knowledge proof systems for computational integrity have seen a rise in popularity in the last couple of years. One of the results of this development is the ongoing effort in designing so-called arithmetization-friendly hash functions in order to make these proofs more efficient. One of these new hash functions, Poseidon, is extensively used in this context, also thanks to being one of the first constructions tailored towards this use case. Many of the design principles of Poseidon...

The sponge construction is a popular method for hashing. Quickly after its introduction, the sponge was proven to be tightly indifferentiable from a random oracle up to $ \approx 2^{c/2}$ queries, where $c$ is the capacity. However, this bound is not tight when the number of message blocks absorbed is restricted to $\ell <\lceil \frac{c}{2(b-c)}\rceil + 1$ (but still an arbitrary number of blocks can be squeezed). In this work, we show that this restriction leads to indifferentiability from...

Troika is a sponge-based hash function designed by Kölbl, Tischhauser, Bogdanov and Derbez in 2019. Its specificity is that it is defined over $\mathbb{F}_3$ in order to be used inside IOTA’s distributed ledger but could also serve in all settings requiring the generation of ternary randomness. To be used in practice, Troika needs to be proven secure against state-of-the-art cryptanalysis. However, there are today almost no analysis tools for ternary designs. In this article we take a step...

This paper analyses the lightweight, sponge-based NAEAD mode $\textsf{ISAP}$, one of the finalists of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography (LWC) standardisation project, that achieves high-throughput with inherent protection against differential power analysis (DPA). We observe that $\textsf{ISAP}$ requires $256$-bit capacity in the authentication module to satisfy the NIST LWC security criteria. In this paper, we study the analysis carefully and observe that this is primarily due to the...

Both multi-user PRFs and sponge-based constructions have generated a lot of research interest lately. Dedicated analyses for multi-user security have improved the bounds a long distance from the early generic bounds obtained through hybrid arguments, yet the bounds generally don't allow the number of users to be more than birthday-bound in key-size. Similarly, known sponge constructions suffer from being only birthday-bound secure in terms of their capacity. We present in this paper...

Sponge hashing is a novel alternative to the popular Merkle-Damgård hashing design. The sponge construction has become increasingly popular in various applications, perhaps most notably, it underlies the SHA-3 hashing standard. Sponge hashing is parametrized by two numbers, $r$ and $c$ (bitrate and capacity, respectively), and by a fixed-size permutation on $r+c$ bits. In this work, we study the collision resistance of sponge hashing instantiated with a random permutation by adversaries with...

The cryptographic sponge is a popular method for hash function design. The construction is in the ideal permutation model proven to be indifferentiable from a random oracle up to the birthday bound in the capacity of the sponge. This result in particular implies that, as long as the attack complexity does not exceed this bound, the sponge construction achieves a comparable level of collision, preimage, and second preimage resistance as a random oracle. We investigate these state-of-the-art...

First of all we take a thorough look at an error in a paper by Daemen et al. (ToSC 2018) which looks at minimal requirements for tree-based hashing based on multiple primitives, including block ciphers. This reveals that the error is more fundamental than previously shown by Gunsing et al. (ToSC 2020), which is mainly interested in its effect on the security bounds. It turns out that the cause for the error is due to an essential oversight in the interaction between the different oracles...

One oft-endeavored security property for cryptographic hash functions is collision resistance: it should be computationally infeasible to find distinct inputs $x,x'$ such that $H(x) = H(x')$, where $H$ is the hash function. Unruh (EUROCRYPT 2016) proposed collapseability as its quantum equivalent. The Merkle-Damgård and sponge hashing modes have recently been proven to be collapseable under the assumption that the underlying primitive is collapseable. These modes are inherently sequential....

The Keccak sponge function family, designed by Bertoni et al. in 2007, was selected by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2012 as the next generation of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3). Due to its theoretical and practical importance, cryptanalysis against SHA-3 has attracted an increasing attention. To the best of our knowledge, the most powerful collision attack on SHA-3 up till now is the linearisation technique proposed by Jian Guo et al. However, that...

Panther is a sponge-based lightweight authenticated encryption scheme published at Indocrypt 2021. Its round function is based on four Nonlinear Feedback Shift Registers (NFSRs). We show here that it is possible to fully recover the secret key of the construction by using a single known plaintext-ciphertext pair and with minimal computational ressources. Furthermore, we show that in a known ciphertext setting an attacker is able with the knowledge of a single ciphertext to decrypt all...

The increasing use of resource limited devices with less memory, less computing resource and less power supply, motivates the adoption of lightweight cryptography to provide security solution. ASCON is a finalist and GIMLI is a round 2 candidate of NIST lightweight cryptography competition. ASCON is a sponge function based authenticated encryption (AE) scheme suitable for high performance applications. It is suitable for use in environments like Internet of Things (IoT) where large number of...

Motivated by new applications such as secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), and Zero-Knowledge proofs (ZK), many MPC-, FHE- and ZK-friendly symmetric-key primitives that minimize the number of multiplications over $\mathbb{F}_p$ for a large prime $p$ have been recently proposed in the literature. This goal is often achieved by instantiating the non-linear layer via power maps $x\mapsto x^d$. In this paper, we start an analysis of new non-linear...

In recent years a new type of block ciphers and hash functions over a (large) field, such as MiMC and GMiMC, have been designed. Their security, particularly over a prime field, is mainly determined by algebraic cryptanalysis techniques, such as Gröbner basis and interpolation attacks. In SAC 2019, Li and Preneel presented low memory interpolation cryptanalysis against the MiMC and Feistel-MiMC designs. In this work we answer the open question posed in their work and show that low memory...

In this paper we prove quantum indifferentiability of the sponge construction instantiated with random (invertible) permutations. With this result we bring the post-quantum security of the standardized SHA-3 hash function to the level matching its security against classical adversaries. To achieve our result, we generalize the compressed-oracle technique of Zhandry (Crypto'19) by defining and proving correctness of a compressed permutation oracle. We believe our technique will find...

We provide a formal proof for the indifferentiability of SKINNY-HASH internal function from a random oracle. SKINNY-HASH is a family of function-based sponge hash functions, and it was selected as one of the second round candidates of the NIST lightweight cryptography competition. Its internal function is constructed from the tweakable block cipher SKINNY. The construction of the internal function is very simple and the designers claim $n$-bit security, where $n$ is the block length of...

Hash functions serve as the fingerprint of a message. They also serve as an authentication mechanism in many applications. Nowadays, hash functions are widely used in blockchain technology and bitcoins. Today, most of the work concentrates on the design of lightweight hash functions which needs minimal hardware and software resources. This paper proposes a lightweight hash function which makes use of Cellular Automata (CA) and sponge functions. This hash function accepts arbitrary length...

A report on the selection process of the STARK friendly hash (SFH) function for standardization by the Ethereum Foundation. The outcome of this process, described here, is our recommendation to use the Rescue function over a prime field of size approximately $ 2^{61}$ in sponge mode with $12$ field elements per state. With an Appendix by Jean-Charles Faugere and Ludovic Perret of CryptoNext Security.

This paper presents WAGE, a new lightweight sponge-based authenticated cipher whose underlying permutation is based on a 37-stage Galois NLFSR over $\mathbb{F}_{2^7}$. At its core, the round function of the permutation consists of the well-analyzed Welch-Gong permutation (WGP), primitive feedback polynomial, a newly designed 7-bit SB sbox and partial word-wise XORs. The construction of the permutation is carried out such that the design of individual components is highly coupled with...

In CRYPTO 2018, Russell et al. introduced the notion of crooked indifferentiability to analyze the security of a hash function when the underlying primitive is subverted. They showed that the $n$-bit to $n$-bit function implemented using enveloped XOR construction ($\mathsf{EXor}$) with $3n+1$ many $n$-bit functions and $3n^2$- bit random initial vectors (iv) can be proven secure asymptotically in the crooked indifferentiability setting. -We identify several major issues and gaps in the...

The security and performance of many integrity proof systems like SNARKs, STARKs and Bulletproofs highly depend on the underlying hash function. For this reason several new proposals have recently been developed. These primitives obviously require an in-depth security evaluation, especially since their implementation constraints have led to less standard design approaches. This work compares the security levels offered by two recent families of such primitives, namely GMiMC and HadesMiMC. We...

The NIST-approved lightweight cryptography competition is an ongoing project to look for some algorithms as lightweight cryp- tographic standards. Recently, NIST chooses 32 algorithms from the 57 submissions as Round 2 candidates. Gimli and Ascon are both the Round 2 candidates. In this paper, we analyze the security of their hash mode against collision attacks. Con- cretely, we mount collision attacks on three hash functions: Gimli-Hash, Ascon-Xof and Ascon-Hash. These three hash functions...

In this work we advance the study of leakage-resilient Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) and lay the theoretical groundwork for building such schemes from sponges. Building on the work of Barwell et al. (ASIACRYPT 2017), we reduce the problem of constructing leakage-resilient AEAD schemes to that of building fixed-input-length function families that retain pseudorandomness and unpredictability in the presence of leakage. Notably, neither property is implied by the other in...

Troika is a recently proposed sponge-based hash function for IOTA's ternary architecture and platform, which is developed by CYBERCRYPT. In this paper, we introduce the preimage attack on 2 and 3 rounds of Troika with a divide-and-conquer approach. Instead of directly matching a given hash value, we propose equivalent conditions to determine whether a message is the preimage before computing the complete hash value. As a result, for the two-round hash value that can be generated with one...

We define ZOCB and ZOTR for nonce-based authenticated encryption with associated data, and analyze their provable security. These schemes use a tweakable blockcipher (TBC) as the underlying primitive, and fully utilize its input to process a plaintext and associated data (AD). This property is commonly referred to as full absorption, and this has been explored for schemes based on a permutation or a pseudorandom function (PRF). Our schemes improve the efficiency of TBC-based counterparts of...

We formalize and analyze the general suffix keyed sponge construction, a pseudorandom function built on top of a cryptographic permutation. The construction hashes its data using the (keyless) sponge construction, transforms part of the state using the secret key, and generates the tag from the output of a final permutation call. In its simplest form, if the key and tag size are at most the rate of the sponge, one can see the suffix keyed sponge as a simple sponge function evaluation whose...

Game-playing proofs constitute a powerful framework for non-quantum cryptographic security arguments, most notably applied in the context of indifferentiability. An essential ingredient in such proofs is lazy sampling of random primitives. We develop a quantum game-playing proof framework by generalizing two recently developed proof techniques. First, we describe how Zhandry's compressed quantum oracles~(Crypto'19) can be used to do quantum lazy sampling of a class of non-uniform function...

In this work we show that the sponge construction can be used to construct quantum-secure pseudorandom functions. As our main result we prove that random sponges are quantum indistinguishable from random functions. In this setting the adversary is given superposition access to the input-output behavior of the construction but not to the internal function. Our proofs hold under the assumption that the internal function is a random function or permutation. We then use this result to obtain a...

To deal with message streams, which is required by many symmetric cryptographic functionalities (MAC, AE, HASH), we propose a lightweight round function called Thin Sponge. We give a framework to construct all these functionalities (MAC, AE, and HASH) using the same Thin Sponge round function. Besides the common security assumptions behind traditional symmetric algorithms, the security of our schemes depends on the hardness of problems to find collisions of some states. We give a class of...

Key-Alternating Feistel (KAF) ciphers, a.k.a. Feistel-2 models, refer to Feistel networks with round functions of the form $F_i(k_i\oplus x_i)$, where $k_i$ is the (secret) round-key and $F_i$ is a public random function. This model roughly captures the structures of many famous Feistel ciphers, and the most prominent instance is DES. Existing provable security results on KAF assumed independent round-keys and round functions (ASIACRYPT 2004 & FSE 2014). In this paper, we investigate how to...

The random-permutation model (RPM) and the ideal-cipher model (ICM) are idealized models that offer a simple and intuitive way to assess the conjectured standard-model security of many important symmetric-key and hash-function constructions. Similarly, the generic-group model (GGM) captures generic algorithms against assumptions in cyclic groups by modeling encodings of group elements as random injections and allows to derive simple bounds on the advantage of such...

We describe an approach to zero-sum partitions using Todo’s division property at EUROCRYPT 2015. It follows the inside-out methodology, and includes MILP-assisted search for the forward and backward trails, and subspace approach to connect those two trails that is less restrictive than commonly done. As an application we choose PHOTON, a family of sponge-like hash function proposals that was recently standardized by ISO. With respect to the security claims made by the designers, we for the...

In this paper, quantum attacks against symmetric-key schemes are presented in which adversaries only make classical queries but use quantum computers for offline computations. Our attacks are not as efficient as polynomial-time attacks making quantum superposition queries, while our attacks use the realistic model and overwhelmingly improve the classical attacks. Our attacks convert a type of classical meet-in-the-middle attacks into quantum ones. The attack cost depends on the number of...

We investigate the post-quantum security of hash functions based on the sponge construction. A crucial property for hash functions in the post-quantum setting is the collapsing property (a strengthening of collision-resistance). We show that the sponge construction is collapsing (and in consequence quantum collision-resistant) under suitable assumptions about the underlying block function. In particular, if the block function is a random function or a (non-invertible) random permutation, the...

In this paper, we propose a family of lightweight cryptographic permutations called sLiSCP, with the sole aim to provide a realistic minimal design}that suits a variety of lightweight device applications. More precisely, we argue that for such devices the chip area dedicated for security purposes should, not only be consumed by an encryption or hashing algorithm, but also provide as many cryptographic functionalities as possible. Our main contribution is the design of a lightweight...

The main efficiency metrics for a cryptographic primitive are its speed, its code size and its memory complexity. For a variety of reasons, many algorithms have been proposed that, instead of optimizing, try to increase one of these hardness forms. We present for the first time a unified framework for describing the hardness of a primitive along any of these three axes: code-hardness, time-hardness and memory-hardness. This unified view allows us to present modular block cipher and sponge...

SHA3 and its extendable output variant SHAKE belong to the family of sponge functions. In this work, we present formal security arguments for the quantum preimage, $2^{\text{nd}}$-preimage, and collision resistance of any sponge function. We just assume that the internally used transformation behaves like a random transformation. These are the first formal arguments that sponge functions (incl. SHA3 and SHAKE) are secure in the post-quantum setting. We even go one step further and prove...

We investigate the post-quantum security of hash functions based on the sponge construction. A crucial property for hash functions in the post-quantum setting is the collapsing property (a strengthening of collision-resistance). We show that the sponge construction is collapsing (and in consequence quantum collision-resistant) under suitable assumptions about the underlying block function. In particular, if the block function is a random function or a (non-invertible) random permutation, the...

NORX is one of the fifteen authenticated encryption algorithms that have reached the third round of the CAESAR competition. NORX is built using the sponge-based Monkey Duplex construction. In this note we analyze the core permutation $F$. We show that it has rotational symmetries on different structure levels. This yields simple distinguishing properties for the permutation, which propagate with very high probability or even probability one. We also investigate differential symmetries in...

The “Internet of Things” (IoT) promises ubiquitous, cheap, connected devices. Unfortunately, most of these devices are hastily developed and will never receive code updates. Part of the IoT’s security problem is cryptographic, but established cryptographic solutions seem too heavy or too inflexible to adapt to new use cases. Here we describe Strobe, a new lightweight framework for building both cryptographic primitives and network protocols. Strobe is a sponge construction in the same...

This paper reconsiders the design of the stream cipher RC4, and proposes an improved variant, which we call ``Spritz'' (since the output comes in fine drops rather than big blocks.) Our work leverages the considerable cryptanalytic work done on the original RC4 and its proposed variants. It also uses simulations extensively to search for biases and to guide the selection of intermediate expressions. We estimate that Spritz can produce output with about 24 cycles/byte of computation. ...

The security analysis of Keccak, the winner of SHA-3, has attracted considerable interest. Recently, some attention has been paid to the analysis of keyed modes of Keccak sponge function. As a notable example, the most efficient key recovery attacks on Keccak-MAC and Keyak were reported at EUROCRYPT'15 where cube attacks and cubeattack- like cryptanalysis have been applied. In this paper, we develop a new type of cube distinguisher, the conditional cube tester, for Keccak sponge function. By...

We present KangarooTwelve, a fast and secure arbitrary output-length hash function aiming at a higher speed than the FIPS 202's SHA-3 and SHAKE functions. While sharing many features with SHAKE128, like the cryptographic primitive, the sponge construction, the eXtendable Output Function (XOF) and the 128-bit security strength, KangarooTwelve offers two major improvements over its standard counterpart. First it has a built-in parallel mode that efficiently exploits multi-core or SIMD...

We present the Bash family of hashing algorithms based on the sponge paradigm. A core element of this family is the Bash-f sponge function which refers to the LRX (Logical-Rotation-Xor) class of symmetric cryptography schemes. We describe the components of Bash-f: a nonlinear mapping, linear diffusion mappings, a permutation of words of a hash state. For each component, we establish reasonable quality criteria as detailed as possible to make the choice of the component maximally objective...

We provide new bounds for the pseudo-random function security of keyed sponge constructions. For the case $c\leq b/2$ ($c$ the capacity and $b$ the permutation size), our result improves over all previously-known bounds. A remarkable aspect of our bound is that dependence between capacity and message length is removed, partially solving the open problem posed by Gaži~et~al. at CRYPTO~2015. Our bound is essentially tight, matching the two types of attacks pointed out by Gaži~et~al. For...

We study the problem of devising provably secure PRNGs with input based on the sponge paradigm. Such constructions are very appealing, as efficient software/hardware implementations of SHA-3 can easily be translated into a PRNG in a nearly black-box way. The only existing sponge-based construction, proposed by Bertoni et al. (CHES 2010), fails to achieve the security notion of robustness recently considered by Dodis et al. (CCS 2013), for two reasons: (1) The construction is deterministic,...

RFID technology is one of the major applications of lightweight cryptography where security and cost both are equally essential or we may say that cost friendly cryptographic tools have given more weightage. In this paper, we propose a lightweight hash, \textit{Neeva-hash} satisfying the very basic idea of lightweight cryptography. Neeva-hash is based on sponge mode of iteration with software friendly permutation which provides great efficiency and required security in RFID technology. The...

In this document we present an introductory overview of the algorithms and design components underlying the Keccac cryptographic primitive and the Keyak encryption scheme for authenticated (session-supporting) encryption. This document aims to familiarize readers with the basic principles of authenticated encryption, the Sponge and Duplex constructions (full-state, keyed as well as regular versions), the permutation functions underlying Keccak and Keyak as well as Keyak v2's Motorist mode of...

We provide a security analysis for full-state keyed Sponge and full-state Duplex constructions. Our results can be used for making a large class of Sponge-based authenticated encryption schemes more efficient by concurrent absorption of associated data and message blocks. In particular, we introduce and analyze a new variant of SpongeWrap with almost free authentication of associated data. The idea of using full-state message absorption for higher efficiency was first made explicit in the...

We present XPX, a tweakable blockcipher based on a single permutation P. On input of a tweak (t_{11},t_{12},t_{21},t_{22}) in T and a message m, it outputs ciphertext c=P(m xor Delta_1) xor Delta_2, where Delta_1=t_{11}k xor t_{12}P(k) and Delta_2=t_{21}k xor t_{22}P(k). Here, the tweak space T is required to satisfy a certain set of trivial conditions (such as (0,0,0,0) not in T). We prove that XPX with any such tweak space is a strong tweakable pseudorandom permutation. Next, we consider...

In October 2012, the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the selection of Keccak as the winner of the SHA-3 Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Competition [10,11]. This concluded an open competition that was remarkable both for its magnitude and the involvement of the cryptographic community. Public review is of paramount importance to increase the confidence in the new standard and to favor its quick adoption. The SHA-3 competition explicitly took this into...

OAEP and other similar schemes proven secure in Random-Oracle Model require one or more hash functions with output size larger than those of standard hash functions. In this paper, we show that by utilizing popular Sponge constructions in OAEP framework, we can eliminate the need of such hash functions. We provide a new scheme in OAEP framework based on Sponge construction and call our scheme \textit{Sponge based asymmetric encryption padding} (SpAEP). SpAEP is based on 2 functions: Sponge...

PHOTON is a lightweight hash function which was proposed by Guo et al. in CRYPTO 2011. This is used in low-resource ubiquitous computing devices such as RFID tags, wireless sensor nodes, smart cards and mobile devices. PHOTON is built using sponge construction and it provides a new MAC function called MAC-PHOTON. This paper deals with FPGA implementations of MAC-PHOTON and their side-channel attack (SCA) resistance. First, we describe three architectures of the MAC-PHOTON based on the...

We prove (nearly) tight bounds on the concrete PRF-security of two constructions of message-authentication codes (MACs): (1) The truncated CBC-MAC construction, which operates as plain CBC-MAC (without prefix-free encoding of messages), but only returns a subset of the output bits. (2) The MAC derived from the sponge hash-function family by pre-pending a key to the message, which is the de-facto standard method for SHA-3-based message authentication. The tight analysis of keyed sponges is...

Keccak is the hash function selected by NIST as the new SHA-3 standard. Keccak is built on Sponge construction and it provides a new MAC function called MAC-Keccak. These new algorithms have raised questions with regards to side-channel leakage and analysis attacks of MAC-Keccak. So far there exists prior work on attacks of software implementations of MAC-Keccak, but there has been no comprehensive side-channel vulnerability assessment of its hardware implementation. In this paper we...

An Authenticated encryption scheme is a scheme which provides privacy and integrity by using a secret key. In 2013, CAESAR (the ``Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability, and Robustness'') was co-founded by NIST and Dan Bernstein with the aim of finding authenticated encryption schemes that offer advantages over AES-GCM and are suitable for widespread adoption. The first round started with 57 candidates in March 2014; and nine of these first-round candidates where...

In this paper, we comprehensively study the resistance of keyed variants of SHA-3 (Keccak) against algebraic attacks. This analysis covers a wide range of key recovery, MAC forgery and other types of attacks, breaking up to 9 rounds (out of the full 24) of the Keccak internal permutation much faster than exhaustive search. Moreover, some of our attacks on the 6-round Keccak are completely practical and were verified on a desktop PC. Our methods combine cube attacks (an algebraic key recovery...

The notion of indifferentiability, which is a stronger version of the classic notion of indistinguishability, was introduced by Maurer, Renner, and Holenstein in 2003. Indifferentiability, among other things, gives us a way of ``securely replacing" a random oracle of one type by a random oracle of a different type. Most indifferentiability proofs in the literature are very complicated, which makes them difficult to verify and in some cases, has even resulted in them being erroneous. In this...

The Sponge function is known to achieve 2^{c/2} security, where c is its capacity. This bound was carried over to keyed variants of the function, such as SpongeWrap, to achieve a min{2^{c/2},2^kappa} security bound, with kappa the key length. Similarly, many CAESAR competition submissions are designed to comply with the classical 2^{c/2} security bound. We show that Sponge-based constructions for authenticated encryption can achieve the significantly higher bound of min{2^{b/2},2^c,2^kappa}...

In this paper we mount the cube attack on the Keccak sponge function. The cube attack, formally introduced in 2008, is an algebraic technique applicable to cryptographic primitives whose output can be described as a low-degree polynomial in the input. Our results show that 5- and 6-round Keccak sponge function is vulnerable to this technique. All the presented attacks have practical complexities and were verified on a desktop PC.

In this paper, we investigate the properties of iterative non-injective functions and the security of primitives where they are used. First, we introduce the Collision Probability Spectrum (CPS) parameter to quantify how far from a permutation a function is. In particular, we show that the output size decreases linearly with the number of iterations whereas the collision trees grow quadratically. Secondly, we investigate the T-sponge construction and show how certain CPS and rate values...

We present Lyra, a password-based key derivation scheme based on cryptographic sponges. Lyra was designed to be strictly sequential (i.e., not easily parallelizable), providing strong security even against attackers that use multiple processing cores (e.g., custom hardware or a powerful GPU). At the same time, it is very simple to implement in software and allows legitimate users to fine-tune its memory and processing costs according to the desired level of security against brute force...

In this paper, we propose a new lightweight hash function supporting three different digest sizes: 80, 96 and 128 bits, providing preimage security from 64 to 120 bits, second preimage and collision security from 40 to 60 bits. LHash requires about 817 GE and 1028 GE with a serialized implementation. In faster implementations based on function $T$, LHash requires 989 GE and 1200 GE with 54 and 72 cycles per block, respectively. Furthermore, its energy consumption evaluated by energy per bit...

The domain of lightweight cryptography focuses on cryptographic algorithms for extremely constrained devices. It is very costly to avoid nonce reuse in such environments, because this requires either a secure pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), or non-volatile memory to store a counter. At the same time, a lot of cryptographic schemes actually require the nonce assumption for their security. In this paper, we propose APE as the first permutation-based authenticated encryption scheme that...

We show how efficient and secure cryptographic mixing functions can be constructed from low-degree rotation-invariant $\phi$ functions rather than conventional S-Boxes. These novel functions have surprising properties; many exhibit inherent feeble (Boolean circuit) one-wayness and offer speed/area tradeoffs unobtainable with traditional constructs. Recent theoretical results indicate that even if the inverse is not explicitly computed in an implementation, its degree plays a fundamental...

The subject of this paper, an improbable implementation of a recently standardized cryptographic hash function on a thirty-five-year-old microcomputer, may strike some as unusual and recreative at best. In the tedious discipline of the process, however, lessons were learned in implementation trade-offs for basic cryptographic primitives which may prove interesting in the current context of securing (small to nano) machine to machine communications. More importantly, that such insights might...

Proving bounds on the expected differential probability (EDP) of a characteristic over all keys has been a popular technique of arguing security for both block ciphers and hash functions. In fact, to a large extent, it was the clear formulation and elegant deployment of this very principle that helped Rijndael win the AES competition. Moreover, most SHA-3 finalists have come with explicit upper bounds on the EDP of a characteristic as a major part of their design rationale. However, despite...

We present an efficient key wrapping scheme that uses a single wide permutation and does not rely on block ciphers. The scheme is capable of wrapping keys up to 1400 bits long and processing arbitrarily long headers. Our scheme easily delivers the security level of 128 bits or higher with the master key of the same length. The permutation can be taken from the sponge hash functions such as SHA-3 (Keccak), Quark, Photon, Spongent. We also present a simple proof of security within the...

In the recent years, several hash constructions have been introduced that aim at achieving enhanced security margins by strengthening the Merkle-Damgård mode. However, their security analysis have been conducted independently and using a variety of proof methodologies. This paper unifies these results by proposing a unique indifferentiability proof that considers a broadened form of the general compression function introduced by Stam at FSE09. This general definition enables us to capture in...

Ristenpart et al. showed that the limitation of the indifferentiability theorem of Maurer et al. which does not cover all multi stage security notions but covers only single stage security notions, defined a new concept (reset indifferentiability), and proved the reset indifferentiability theorem, which is an analogy of the indifferentiability theorem covers all security notions S: if H^U is reset indifferentiable from RO, for any security notion, a cryptosystem C is at least as secure in...

The design of secure yet efficiently implementable cryptographic algorithms is a fundamental problem of cryptography. Lately, lightweight cryptography - optimizing the algorithms to fit the most constrained environments - has received a great deal of attention, the recent research being mainly focused on building block ciphers. As opposed to that, the design of lightweight hash functions is still far from being well-investigated with only few proposals in the public domain. In this article,...

RFID security is currently one of the major challenges cryptography has to face, often solved by protocols assuming that an on-tag hash function is available. In this article we present the PHOTON lightweight hash-function family, available in many different flavors and suitable for extremely constrained devices such as passive RFID tags. Our proposal uses a sponge-like construction as domain extension algorithm and an AES-like primitive as internal unkeyed permutation. This allows us to...

PHOTON is a new collection of lightweight hash functions which use an extended sponge construction and AES-like permutations. The family has five members, and each of them has a corresponding permutation. The state sizes of these permutations are 100 bits, 144 bits, 196 bits, 256 bits and 288 bits, respectively. In this paper, we firstly estimate the upper bounds on the algebraic degrees of some round-reduced permutations and use the spectral properties to improve them. Then, some zero-sum...

This paper proposes a novel construction, called duplex, closely related to the sponge construction, that accepts message blocks to be hashed and, at no extra cost, provides digests on the input blocks received so far. It can be proven equivalent to a cascade of sponge functions and hence inherits its security against single-stage generic attacks. The main application proposed here is an authenticated encryption mode based on the duplex construction. This mode is efficient, namely,...

Sponge functions were introduced by Bertoni et al. as an alternative to the classical Merkle-Damgaard design. Many hash function submissions to the SHA-3 competition launched by NIST in 2007, such as CubeHash, Fugue, Hamsi, JH, Keccak and Luffa, derive from the original sponge design, and security guarantees from some of these constructions are typically based on indifferentiability results. Although indifferentiability proofs for these designs often bear significant similarities, these have...

Recent developments in the field of cryptanalysis of hash functions has inspired NIST to announce a competition for selecting a new cryptographic hash function to join the SHA family of standards. One of the 14 second-round candidates is CubeHash designed by Daniel J. Bernstein. CubeHash is a unique hash function in the sense that it does not iterate a common compression function, and offers a structure which resembles a sponge function, even though it is not exactly a sponge function. In...