Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2013/433

On Symmetric Encryption with Distinguishable Decryption Failures

Alexandra Boldyreva and Jean Paul Degabriele and Kenneth G. Paterson and Martijn Stam

Abstract: We propose to relax the assumption that decryption failures are indistinguishable in security models for symmetric encryption. Our main purpose is to build models that better reflect the reality of cryptographic implementations, and to surface the security issues that arise from doing so. We systematically explore the consequences of this relaxation, with some surprising consequences for our understanding of this basic cryptographic primitive. Our results should be useful to practitioners who wish to build accurate models of their implementations and then analyse them. They should also be of value to more theoretical cryptographers proposing new encryption schemes, who, in an ideal world, would be compelled by this work to consider the possibility that their schemes might leak more than simple decryption failures.

Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / multiple errors, cryptographic practice, implementation, decryption failures, security models

Publication Info: FSE 2013

Date: received 9 Jul 2013, last revised 25 Jun 2014

Contact author: jpdega at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Minor typos were corrected.

Version: 20140625:154937 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2013/433

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