Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2001/021

The Rectangle Attack - Rectangling the Serpent

Biham Eli, Orr Dunkelman, Nathan Keller

Abstract: Serpent is one of the 5 AES finalists. The best attack published so far analyzes up to 9 rounds. In this paper we present attacks on 7-round, 8-round, and 10-round variants of Serpent. We attack 7-round variant of Serpent with all key lengths, and 8- and 10-round variants wih 256-bit keys.

The 10-roun attack on the 256-bit keys variants is the best published attack on the cipher. The attack enhances the amplified boomerang attack and uses better differentials. We also present the best 3-round, 4-round, 5-round and 6-round differential characteristics of Serpent.

Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / Serpent, Rectangle Attack, Cryptanalysis, Boomerang Attack, Amplified Boomerang Attack

Publication Info: Will be presented in EuroCrypt 2001

Date: received 5 Mar 2001

Contact author: orrd at cs technion ac il

Available format(s): Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20010306:165218 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2001/021

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