International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

IACR News item: 30 August 2013

Hoda A. Alkhzaimi, Martin M. Lauridsen
ePrint Report ePrint Report
Recently, the U.S National Security Agency has published the specifications of two families of lightweight block ciphers, SIMON and SPECK, in ePrint report 2013/404. The ciphers are developed with optimization towards both hardware and software in mind. While the specification paper discusses design requirements and performance of the presented lightweight ciphers thoroughly, no security assessment is given. This paper is a move towards filling that cryptanalysis gap for the SIMON family of ciphers. We present a series of observations on the presented construction that, in some cases, yield attacks, while in other cases may provide basis of further analysis by the cryptographic community. Specifically, we obtain attacks using classical- as well as truncated differentials. In the former case, we show how the smallest version of SIMON, Simon32/64, exhibits a strong differential effect.

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