International Association
for Cryptologic Research

We propose a new AEAD mode of operation for an efficient countermeasure against side-channel attacks. Our mode achieves the smallest memory with high-order masking, by minimizing the states that are duplicated in masking. An $s$-bit key-dependent state is necessary for achieving $s$-bit security, and the conventional schemes always protect the entire $s$ bits with masking. We reduce the protected state size by introducing an unprotected state in the key-dependent state: we protect only a half and give another half to a side-channel adversary. Ensuring independence between the unprotected and protected states is the key technical challenge since mixing these states reveals the protected state to the adversary. We propose a new mode $\mathsf{HOMA}$ that achieves $s$-bit security using a tweakable block cipher with the $s/2$-bit block size. We also propose a new primitive for instantiating $\mathsf{HOMA}$ with $s=128$ by extending the SKINNY tweakable block cipher to a 64-bit plaintext block, a 128-bit key, and a $(256+3)$-bit tweak. We make hardware performance evaluation by implementing $\mathsf{HOMA}$ with high-order masking for $d \le 5$. For any $d > 0$, $\mathsf{HOMA}$ outperforms the current state-of-the-art $\mathsf{PFB\_Plus}$ by reducing the circuit area larger than that of the entire S-box.

In this paper, a new lightweight authenticated encryption scheme AESLBBB is proposed, which was designed to provide backward compatibility with advanced encryption standard (AES) as well as high security and low memory. The primary design goal, backward compatibility, is motivated by the fact that AES accelerators are now very common for devices in the field; we are interested in designing an efficient and highly secure mode of operation that exploits the best of those AES accelerators. The backward compatibility receives little attention in the NIST lightweight cryptography standardization process, in which only 3 out of 32 round-2 candidates are based on AES. Our mode, LBBB, is inspired by the design of ALE in the sense that the internal state size is a minimum 2n bits when using a block cipher of length n bits for the key and data. Unfortunately, there is no security proof of ALE, and forgery attacks have been found on ALE. In LBBB, we introduce an additional feed from block cipher’s output to the key state via a certain permutation λ, which enables us to prove beyond-birthday-bound (BBB) security. We then specify its AES instance, AES-LBBB, and evaluate its performance for (i) software implementation on a microcontroller with an AES coprocessor and (ii) hardware implementation for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to show that AES-LBBB performs better than the current state-of-the-art Remus-N2 with AES-128.

Sharing a common primitive for multiple functionalities is essential for lightweight cryptography, and NIST's lightweight cryptography competition (LWC) considers the integration of hashing to AEAD. While permutations are natural primitive choices in such a goal, for design diversity, it is interesting to investigate how small block-cipher (BC) based and tweakable block-cipher (TBC) based schemes can be. Double-block-length (DBL) hash function modes are suitable to ensure the same security level for AEAD and hashing, but hard to achieve a small memory size. Romulus, a TBC-based finalist in NIST LWC, introduced the DBL hashing scheme Romulus-H, but it requires $3n+k$ bits of memory using an underlying primitive with an $n$-bit block and a $k$-bit (twea)key. Even the smallest DBL modes in the literature require $2n+k$ bits of memory. Addressing this issue, we present new DBL modes EXEX-NI and EXEX-I achieving $(n+k)$-bit state size, i.e., no extra memory in addition to $n+k$ bits needed within the primitive. EXEX-NI is indifferentiable from a random oracle up to $n - \log n$ bits. By instantiating it with SKINNY, we can provide hashing to Romulus with zero memory overhead. EXEX-I is an optimized mode with collision resistance. We finally compare the hardware performances of EXEX-NI and EXEX-I, and Romulus-H with SKINNY-128-384. EXEX-NI and EXEX-I achieve the circuit-area reduction by 2,000+ GE, yielding the total areas being smaller than 70% of that of Romulus-H.

This paper proposes tweakable block cipher (TBC) based modes \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus} and \textsf{PFB}$\omega$ that are efficient in threshold implementations (TI). Let $t$ be an algebraic degree of a target function, e.g. $t=1$ (resp. $t>1$) for linear (resp. non-linear) function. The $d$-th order TI encodes the internal state into $d t + 1$ shares. Hence, the area size increases proportionally to the number of shares. This implies that TBC based modes can be smaller than block cipher (BC) based modes in TI because TBC requires $s$-bit block to ensure $s$-bit security, e.g. \textsf{PFB} and \textsf{Romulus}, while BC requires $2s$-bit block. However, even with those TBC based modes, the minimum we can reach is 3 shares of $s$-bit state with $t=2$ and the first-order TI ($d=1$). Our first design \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus} aims to break the barrier of the $3s$-bit state in TI. The block size of an underlying TBC is $s/2$ bits and the output of TBC is linearly expanded to $s$ bits. This expanded state requires only 2 shares in the first-order TI, which makes the total state size $2.5s$ bits. We also provide rigorous security proof of \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus}. Our second design \textsf{PFB}$\omega$ further increases a parameter $\omega$: a ratio of the security level $s$ to the block size of an underlying TBC. We prove security of \textsf{PFB}$\omega$ for any $\omega$ under some assumptions for an underlying TBC and for parameters used to update a state. Next, we show a concrete instantiation of \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus} for 128-bit security. It requires a TBC with 64-bit block, 128-bit key and 128-bit tweak, while no existing TBC can support it. We design a new TBC by extending \textsf{SKINNY} and provide basic security evaluation. Finally, we give hardware benchmarks of \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus} in the first-order TI to show that TI of \textsf{PFB}\_\textsf{Plus} is smaller than that of \textsf{PFB} by more than one thousand gates and is the smallest within the schemes having 128-bit security.

This paper proposes a new lightweight deterministic authenticated encryption (DAE) scheme providing 128-bit security. Lightweight DAE schemes are practically important because resource-restricted devices sometimes cannot afford to manage a nonce properly. For this purpose, we first design a new mode LM-DAE that has a minimal state size and uses a tweakable block cipher (TBC). The design can be implemented with low memory and is advantageous in threshold implementations (TI) as a side-channel attack countermeasure. LM-DAE further reduces the implementation cost by eliminating the inverse tweak schedule needed in the previous TBC-based DAE modes. LM-DAE is proven to be indistinguishable from an ideal DAE up to the O(2n) query complexity for the block size n. To achieve 128-bit security, an underlying TBC must handle a 128-bit block, 128-bit key, and 128+4-bit tweak, where the 4-bit tweak comes from the domain separation. To satisfy this requirement, we extend SKINNY-128-256 with an additional 4-bit tweak, by applying the elastic-tweak proposed by Chakraborti et al. We evaluate the hardware performances of the proposed scheme with and without TI. Our LM-DAE implementation achieves 3,717 gates, roughly 15% fewer than state-of-the-art nonce-based schemes, thanks to removing the inverse tweak schedule.

Tweakable block ciphers (TBCs) have proven highly useful to boost the security guarantees of authentication schemes. In 2017, Cogliati et al. proposed two MACs combining TBC and universal hash functions: a nonce-based MAC called NaT and a deterministic MAC called HaT. While both constructions provide high security, their properties are complementary: NaT is almost fully secure when nonces are respected (i.e., n-bit security, where n is the block size of the TBC, and no security degradation in terms of the number of MAC queries when nonces are unique), while its security degrades gracefully to the birthday bound (n/2 bits) when nonces are misused. HaT has n-bit security and can be used naturally as a nonce-based MAC when a message contains a nonce. However, it does not have full security even if nonces are unique.This work proposes two highly secure and efficient MACs to fill the gap: NaT2 and eHaT. Both provide (almost) full security if nonces are unique and more than n/2-bit security when nonces can repeat. Based on NaT and HaT, we aim at achieving these properties in a modular approach. Our first proposal, Nonce-as-Tweak2 (NaT2), is the sum of two NaT instances. Our second proposal, enhanced Hash-as-Tweak (eHaT), extends HaT by adding the output of an additional nonce-depending call to the TBC and prepending nonce to the message. Despite the conceptual simplicity, the security proofs are involved. For NaT2 in particular, we rely on the recent proof framework for Double-block Hash-then-Sum by Kim et al. from Eurocrypt 2020.

PMAC is a rate-1, parallelizable, block-cipher-based message authentication code (MAC), proposed by Black and Rogaway (EUROCRYPT 2002). Improving the security bound is a main research topic for PMAC. In particular, showing a tight bound is the primary goal of the research, since Luykx et al.’s paper (EUROCRYPT 2016). Regarding the pseudo-random-function (PRF) security of PMAC, a collision of the hash function, or the difference between a random permutation and a random function offers the lower bound Ω(q2/2n) for q queries and the block cipher size n. Regarding the MAC security (unforgeability), a hash collision for MAC queries, or guessing a tag offers the lower bound Ω(q2m /2n + qv/2n) for qm MAC queries and qv verification queries (forgery attempts). The tight upper bound of the PRF-security O(q2/2n) of PMAC was given by Gaži et el. (ToSC 2017, Issue 1), but their proof requires a 4-wise independent masking scheme that uses 4 n-bit random values. Open problems from their work are: (1) find a masking scheme with three or less random values with which PMAC has the tight upper bound for PRF-security; (2) find a masking scheme with which PMAC has the tight upper bound for MAC-security.In this paper, we consider PMAC with two powering-up masks that uses two random values for the masking scheme. Using the structure of the powering-up masking scheme, we show that the PMAC has the tight upper bound O(q2/2n) for PRF-security, which answers the open problem (1), and the tight upper bound O(q2m /2n + qv/2n) for MAC-security, which answers the open problem (2). Note that these results deal with two-key PMACs, thus showing tight upper bounds of PMACs with single-key and/or with one powering-up mask are open problems.

The use of a small block length is a common strategy when designing lightweight (tweakable) block ciphers (TBCs), and several 64-bit primitives have been proposed. However, when such a 64-bit primitive is used for an authenticated encryption with birthday-bound security, it has only 32-bit data complexity, which is subject to practical attacks. To employ a short block length without compromising security, we propose PFB, a lightweight TBC-based authenticated encryption with associated data mode, which achieves beyond-birthday-bound security. For this purpose, we extend iCOFB, which is originally defined with a tweakable random function. Unlike iCOFB, the proposed method can be instantiated with a TBC using a fixed tweak length and can handle variable-length data. Moreover, its security bound is improved and independent of the data length; this improves the key lifetime, particularly in lightweight blocks with a small size. The proposed method also covers a broader class of feedback functions because of the generalization presented in our proof. We evaluate the concrete hardware performances of PFB, which benefits from the small block length and shows particularly good performances in threshold implementation.

Lightweight cryptography in computationally constrained devices is actively studied. In contrast to advances of lightweight blockcipher in the last decade, lightweight mode of operation is seemingly not so mature, yet it has large impact in performance. Therefore, there is a great demand for lightweight mode of operation, especially that for authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD). Among many known properties of conventional modes of operation, the following four properties are essential for constrained devices: Minimum State Size: the state size equals to a block size of a blockcipher. Inverse Free: no need for a blockcipher decryption. XOR Only: only XOR is needed in addition to a blockcipher encryption. Online: a data block is processed only once. The properties 1 and 4 contribute to small memory usage, and the properties 2 and 3 contribute to small program/circuit footprint. On top of the above properties, the fifth property regarding associated data (AD) is also important for performance: Efficient Handling of Static AD: static AD can be precomputed. We design a lightweight blockcipher-based AEAD mode of operation called SAEB: the first mode of operation that satisfies all the five properties to the best of our knowledge. Performance of SAEB is evaluated in various software and hardware platforms. The evaluation results show that SAEB outperforms conventional blockcipher-based AEAD modes of operation in various performance metrics for lightweight cryptography.

Modular design via a tweakable blockcipher (TBC) offers efficient authenticated encryption (AE) schemes (with associated data) that call a blockcipher once for each data block (of associated data or a plaintext). However, the existing efficient blockcipher-based TBCs are secure up to the birthday bound, where the underlying keyed blockcipher is a secure strong pseudorandom permutation. Existing blockcipher-based AE schemes with beyond-birthday-bound (BBB) security are not efficient, that is, a blockcipher is called twice or more for each data block. In this paper, we present a TBC, XKX, that offers efficient blockcipher-based AE schemes with BBB security, by combining with efficient TBC-based AE schemes such as ΘCB3 and