IACR News item: 27 August 2014
Itai Dinur
ePrint ReportIn this paper, we devise new cryptanalytic time-memory-data tradeoff attacks on FX-constructions, combining recent techniques by Fouque, Joux and Mavromati with time-memory-data tradeoffs for stream ciphers. While our attacks do not contradict the security proof of PRINCE and PRIDE, nor pose an immediate threat to their users, some specific choices of tradeoff parameters demonstrate that the security margin of the ciphers against practical attacks is smaller than expected. Finally, we propose very light changes to PRINCE and PRIDE. These changes ensure that the ciphers resist our attacks while maintaining their design goals, with the exception of the theoretical security proof (which is invalidated, as PRINCE and PRIDE are no longer FX-constructions). Consequently, we conclude that although the FX-construction provides a very simple way of increasing the security of a widely deployed cipher (such as DES at the time), using it for a new design is a less reasonable approach.
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