Skip to main content

A Statistical Saturation Attack against the Block Cipher PRESENT

  • Conference paper
Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA 2009 (CT-RSA 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5473))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In this paper, we present a statistical saturation attack that combines previously introduced cryptanalysis techniques against block ciphers. As the name suggests, the attack is statistical and can be seen as a particular example of partitioning cryptanalysis. It extracts information about the key by observing non-uniform distributions in the ciphertexts. It can also be seen as a dual to saturation (aka square, integral) attacks in the sense that it exploits the diffusion properties in block ciphers and a combination of active and passive multisets of bits in the plaintexts. The attack is chosen-plaintext in its basic version but can be easily extended to a known-plaintext scenario. As an illustration, it is applied to the block cipher PRESENT proposed by Bogdanov et al. at CHES 2007. We provide theoretical arguments to predict the attack efficiency and show that it improves previous (linear, differential) cryptanalysis results. We also provide experimental evidence that we can break up to 15 rounds of PRESENT with 235.6 plaintext-ciphertext pairs. Eventually, we discuss the attack specificities and possible countermeasures. Although dedicated to PRESENT, it is an open question to determine if this technique improves the best known cryptanalysis for other ciphers.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Anderson, R., Biham, E., Knudsen, L.: Serpent: A Proposal for the Advanced Encryption Standard. In: The proceedings of the First Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Conference, Ventura, CA (August 1998)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baignères, T., Junod, P., Vaudenay, S.: How far can we go beyond linear cryptanalysis? In: Lee, P.J. (ed.) ASIACRYPT 2004. LNCS, vol. 3329, pp. 432–450. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Biryukov, A., De Cannière, C., Quisquater, M.: On multiple linear approximations. In: Franklin, M. (ed.) CRYPTO 2004. LNCS, vol. 3152, pp. 1–22. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Bogdanov, A., Knudsen, L., Leander, G., Paar, C., Poschmann, A., Robshaw, M., Seurin, Y., Vikkelsoe, C.: PRESENT: An ultra-lightweight block cipher. In: Paillier, P., Verbauwhede, I. (eds.) CHES 2007. LNCS, vol. 4727, pp. 450–466. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Collard, B., Standaert, F.-X., Quisquater, J.-J.: Improving the time complexity of matsui’s linear cryptanalysis. In: Nam, K.-H., Rhee, G. (eds.) ICISC 2007. LNCS, vol. 4817, pp. 77–88. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Daemen, J., Knudsen, L.R., Rijmen, V.: The Block Cipher Square. In: Biham, E. (ed.) FSE 1997. LNCS, vol. 1267, pp. 149–165. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Gilbert, H., Handschuh, H., Joux, A., Vaudenay, S.: A Statistical Attack on RC6. In: Schneier, B. (ed.) FSE 2000. LNCS, vol. 1978, pp. 64–74. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Harpes, C., Kramer, G., Massey, J.: A Generalization of Linear Cryptanalysis and the Applicability of Matsui’s Piling-Up Lemma. In: Guillou, L.C., Quisquater, J.-J. (eds.) EUROCRYPT 1995. LNCS, vol. 921, pp. 24–38. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Harpes, C., Massey, J.: Partitioning Cryptanalysis. In: Biham, E. (ed.) FSE 1997. LNCS, vol. 1267, pp. 13–27. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Hermelin, M., Cho, J.Y., Nyberg, K.: Multidimensional Linear Cryptanalysis of Reduced Round Serpent. In: Mu, Y., Susilo, W., Seberry, J. (eds.) ACISP 2008. LNCS, vol. 5107, pp. 203–215. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Hwang, K.: Saturation Attacks on Reduced Round Skipjack. In: Daemen, J., Rijmen, V. (eds.) FSE 2002. LNCS, vol. 2365, pp. 100–111. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Kaliski, B.S., Robshaw, M.J.B.: Linear Cryptanalysis using Multiple Approximations. In: Desmedt, Y.G. (ed.) CRYPTO 1994. LNCS, vol. 839, pp. 26–39. Springer, Heidelberg (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Knudsen, L.R., Wagner, D.: Integral cryptanalysis. In: Daemen, J., Rijmen, V. (eds.) FSE 2002. LNCS, vol. 2365, pp. 112–127. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Matsui, M.: Linear cryptanalysis method for DES cipher. In: Helleseth, T. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 1993. LNCS, vol. 765, pp. 386–397. Springer, Heidelberg (1994)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Minier, M., Gilbert, H.: Stochastic Cryptanalysis of Crypton. In: Schneier, B. (ed.) FSE 2000. LNCS, vol. 1978, pp. 121–133. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Vaudenay, S.: An experiment on DES - Statistical Cryptanalysis, in the third ACM Conference on Computer Security, New Dehli, India, pp. 139–147 (March 1996)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Wang, M.: Differential cryptanalysis of reduced-round PRESENT. In: Vaudenay, S. (ed.) AFRICACRYPT 2008. LNCS, vol. 5023, pp. 40–49. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Collard, B., Standaert, F.X. (2009). A Statistical Saturation Attack against the Block Cipher PRESENT. In: Fischlin, M. (eds) Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA 2009. CT-RSA 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5473. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00862-7_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00862-7_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00861-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00862-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics