Paper 2018/1130

Applications of H-Technique: Revisiting Symmetric Key Security Analysis

Ashwin Jha and Mridul Nandi

Abstract

The Coefficients H Technique (also called H-technique), by Patarin, is a tool to obtain upper bound on the distinguishing advantage. The tool is known for providing quite simpler and tight bound proofs as compared to some other well-known tools such as Game-playing technique and Random Systems methodology. In this paper, we aim to provide a brief survey on the H-technique. The survey is in three parts: First, we redevelop the necessary nomenclatures and tools required to study the security of symmetric key designs. Second, we give a full description of the H-technique and show that it can provide optimal bounds on the distinguishing advantage. Third, we give simpler proofs for some popular symmetric key designs, across different paradigms, using the H-technique.