Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 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.
Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / Block cipher, meet-in-the-middle attack, provable security, exposure resilient function.
Original Publication (with major differences): Accepted at IMA CC 2013
Date: received 26 Sep 2013, last revised 26 Sep 2013
Contact author: pierre karpman at gmail com
Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation
Version: 20130927:124400 (All versions of this report)
Short URL: ia.cr/2013/618
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