SMT‐based cube attack on round‐reduced Simeck32/64. (1st September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zaheri, Mojtaba; Sadeghiyan, Babak
• Is Part Of: IET information security. Volume 14:Number 5(2020)
• Page Start: 604
• Page End: 611
• Publication Date: 2020-09-01
• Subjects: computability -- cryptography; SMT‐based cube attack -- SMT solver -- middle state cube characteristics -- reduced‐round versions -- key recovery attack -- ciphertext pairs -- cryptanalysis -- block cipher -- Boolean satisfiability problem; Computer security -- Periodicals; Cryptography -- Periodicals; Computer networks -- Security measures -- Periodicals; Database security -- Periodicals; 005.8
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-ifs.2019.0496
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8709

Abstract

Abstract : In this study, the authors take advantage of feeding the SMT solver by extra information provided through middle state cube characteristics to introduce a new method which they call SMT‐based cube attack, and apply it to improve the success of the solver in attacking reduced‐round versions of Simeck32/64 lightweight block cipher. The key idea is to search for and utilise all found middle state characteristics of a cube at one round of attack. They first propose a new algorithm to find cubes with most number of middle state characteristics. Then, they apply these obtained cubes and their characteristics as extra information in the SMT definition of the cryptanalysis problem, to evaluate its effectiveness. Their cryptanalysis results in a full key recovery attack by 64 plaintext/ciphertext pairs on 12 rounds of the cipher in just 122.17 s. This is the first algebraic attack so far presented against the reduced‐round versions of Simeck32/64, and also with practical complexities. They also conduct the cube attack on the Simeck32/64 to compare with the SMT‐based cube attack. The results indicate that the proposed attack is more powerful than the cube attack.