Security Amplification against Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks Using Whitening

Pierre-Alain Fouque; Pierre Karpman

Paper 2013/618

Security Amplification against Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks Using Whitening

Pierre-Alain Fouque and Pierre Karpman

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a model for studying meet-in-the-middle attacks on block ciphers, and a simple block cipher construction provably resistant to such attacks in this model. A side-result of this is a proper formalization for an unproven alternative to DESX proposed by Kilian and Rogaway; this construction can now be shown to be sound in our model. Meet-in-the-middle attacks exploit weaknesses in key schedule algorithms, and building constructions resistant to such attacks is an important issue for improving the security of block ciphers. Our construction is generic so that it can be used on top of any block cipher, and it does not require to increase the key-length. We use an exposure resilient function (or ERF) as a building block and we propose a concrete and efficient instantiation strategy based on compression functions.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Secret-key cryptography
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Major revision. Accepted at IMA CC 2013
Keywords: Block cipher meet-in-the-middle attack provable security exposure resilient function.
Contact author(s): pierre karpman @ gmail com
History: 2013-09-27: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2013/618
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2013/618,
      author = {Pierre-Alain Fouque and Pierre Karpman},
      title = {Security Amplification against Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks Using Whitening},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2013/618},
      year = {2013},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/618}
}