Preimage and Collision Attacks on Reduced Ascon Using Algebraic Strategies

Qinggan Fu; Ye Luo; Qianqian Yang; Ling Song

Paper 2023/1453

Preimage and Collision Attacks on Reduced Ascon Using Algebraic Strategies

Qinggan Fu, College of Cyber Security, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

Ye Luo, College of Cyber Security, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

Qianqian Yang, State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Ling Song, College of Cyber Security, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China, National Joint Engineering Research Center of Network Security Detection and Protection Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

Abstract

Ascon, a family of algorithms that supports hashing and authenticated encryption, is the winner of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Project. In this paper, we propose an improved preimage attack against 2-round Ascon-XOF-64 with a complexity of $2^{32}$ via a better guessing strategy. Furthermore, in order to find a good guessing strategy efficiently, we build a MILP model and successfully extend the attack to 3 rounds. The time complexity is $2^{53}$ when $IV=0$, while for the real $IV$, the attack still works and the time complexity is $2^{51}$. Additionally, we also investigate the resistance of Ascon-HASH against collision attacks. We introduce the linearization of the inverse of S-boxes and then propose a practical free-start collision attack on 3-round Ascon-HASH using a differential trail searched dedicatedly. Furthermore, We construct different 2-round connectors using the linearization of the inverse of S-boxes and successfully extend the collision attack to 4 rounds and 5 rounds of Ascon-HASH with complexities of $2^{21}$ and $2^{41}$ respectively. Although our attacks do not compromise the security of the full 12-round Ascon-XOF and Ascon-HASH, they provide some insights into Ascon's security.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Attacks and cryptanalysis
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Ascon Preimage attack Collision attack Guessing strategy Linearization.
Contact author(s): fuqinggan @ stu2018 jnu edu cn
roylaw456 @ gmail com
yangqianqian @ iie ac cn
songling qs @ gmail com
History: 2023-09-24: approved; 2023-09-22: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2023/1453
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/1453,
      author = {Qinggan Fu and Ye Luo and Qianqian Yang and Ling Song},
      title = {Preimage and Collision Attacks on Reduced Ascon Using Algebraic Strategies},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/1453},
      year = {2023},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1453}
}