Abstract
We evaluate the security of RECTANGLE from the perspective of actual key information (AKI). Insufficient AKI permits the attackers to deduce some subkey bits from some other subkey bits, thereby lowering the overall attack complexity or getting more attacked rounds. By considering the interaction between the key schedule’s diffusion and the round function’s diffusion, we find there exists AKI insufficiency in 4 consecutive rounds for RECTANGLE-80 and 6 consecutive rounds for RECTANGLE-128, although the master key bits achieve complete diffusion in 2 and 4 rounds, respectively. With such weakness of the key schedule, we give a generic meet-in-the-middle attack on 12-round reduced RECTANGLE-128 with only 8 known plaintexts. Moreover, we calculate AKI of variants of RECTANGLE as well as PRESENT. Surprisingly we find that both RECTANGLE-128 and PRESENT-128 with no key schedule involve more AKI than the original one. Based on this finding, we slightly modify the key schedule of RECTANGLE-128. Compared with the original one, this new key schedule matches better with the round function in terms of maximizing AKI. Our work adds more insight to the design of block ciphers’ key schedule.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bogdanov A, Knudsen L R, Leander G, et al. PRESENT: an ultra-lightweight block cipher. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2007. 450–466
Guo J, Peyrin T, Poschmann A. The LED block cipher. In: Proceedings of Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems-CHES 2011, 2011
Banik S, Bogdanov A, Isobe T, et al. Midori: a block cipher for low energy. In: Proceedings of International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security. Berlin: Springer, 2014. 411–436
Beierle C, Jean J, Kölbl S, et al. The SKINNY family of block ciphers and its low-latency variant MANTIS. In: Proceedings of Annual Cryptology Conference. Berlin: Springer, 2016. 123–153
Avanzi R. The QARMA block cipher family. IACR Trans Symmetric Cryptol, 2017, 2017: 4–44
Banik S, Pandey S K, Peyrin T, et al. GIFT: a small PRESENT. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2017. 321–345
Beaulieu R, Treatman-Clark S, Shors D, et al. The SIMON and SPECK lightweight block ciphers. In: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM/EDAC/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2015. 1–6
Wu W, Zhang L. LBlock: a lightweight block cipher. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security. Berlin: Springer, 2011. 327–344
Suzaki T, Minematsu K, Morioka S, et al. TWINE: a lightweight block cipher for multiple platforms. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Selected Areas in Cryptography. Berlin: Springer, 2012. 339–354
Hong D, Sung J, Hong S, et al. HIGHT: a new block cipher suitable for low-resource device. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2006. 46–59
Needham R M, Wheeler D J. Tea Extensions. Technical Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1997
Knudsen L, Leander G, Poschmann A, et al. PRINTcipher: a block cipher for IC-printing. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems. Berlin: Springer, 2010. 16–32
Diffie W, Hellman M E. Special feature exhaustive cryptanalysis of the NBS data encryption standard. Computer, 1977, 10: 74–84
Huang J, Lai X. Revisiting key schedule’s diffusion in relation with round function’s diffusion. Des Codes Cryptogr, 2014, 73: 85–103
Huang J, Vaudenay S, Lai X. On the key schedule of lightweight block ciphers. In: Proceedings of International Conference in Cryptology in India. Berlin: Springer, 2014. 124–142
Lin L, Wu W, Zheng Y. Automatic search for key-bridging technique: applications to LBlock and TWINE. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 2016. 247–267
Dunkelman O, Keller N, Shamir A. Improved single-key attacks on 8-round AES-192 and AES-256. In: Proceedings of International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security. Berlin: Springer, 2010. 158–176
Zhang W T, Bao Z Z, Lin D D, et al. RECTANGLE: a bit-slice lightweight block cipher suitable for multiple platforms. Sci China Inf Sci, 2015, 58: 1–15
Biham E, Shamir A. Differential cryptanalysis of DES-like cryptosystems. J Cryptology, 1991, 4: 3–72
Biham E, Biryukov A, Shamir A. Cryptanalysis of Skipjack reduced to 31 rounds using impossible differentials. In: Proceedings of International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques. Berlin: Springer, 1999. 12–23
Matsui M. Linear cryptanalysis method for DES cipher. In: Proceedings of Workshop on the Theory and Application of of Cryptographic Techniques. Berlin: Springer, 1993. 386–397
Daemen J, Knudsen L, Rijmen V. The block cipher Square. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 1997. 149–165
Knudsen L,Wagner D. Integral cryptanalysis. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 2002. 112–127
Collard B, Standaert F X. A statistical saturation attack against the block cipher PRESENT. In: Proceedings of Cryptographers’ Track at the RSA Conference. Berlin: Springer, 2009. 195–210
Shan J Y, Hu L, Song L, et al. Related-key differential attack on 19-round reduced RECTANGLE-80 (in Chinese). J Cryptologic Reseatch, 2015, 2: 54–65
Kosuge H, Tanaka H, Iwai K, et al. Integral attack on reduced-round Rectangle. In: Proceedings of IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cyber Security and Cloud Computing (CSCloud), 2015. 68–73
Sun L, Wang M Q. Toward a further understanding of bit-based division property. Sci China Inf Sci, 2017, 60: 128101
Xiang Z, Zhang W, Bao Z, et al. Applying MILP method to searching integral distinguishers based on division property for 6 lightweight block ciphers. In: Proceedings of International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security. Berlin: Springer, 2016. 648–678
Sasaki Y, Todo Y. New impossible differential search tool from design and cryptanalysis aspects. In: Proceedings of Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques. Berlin: Springer, 2017. 185–215
Zhang W, Bao Z, Rijmen V, et al. A new classification of 4-bit optimal s-boxes and its application to PRESENT, RECTANGLE and SPONGENT. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 2015. 494–515
Stoffelen K. Optimizing s-box implementations for several criteria using SAT solvers. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 2016. 140–160
Bao Z, Luo P, Lin D. Bitsliced implementations of the PRINCE, LED and RECTANGLE block ciphers on AVR 8-bit microcontrollers. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Information and Communications Security. Berlin: Springer, 2015. 18–36
Maene P, Verbauwhede I. Single-cycle implementations of block ciphers. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Lightweight Cryptography for Security and Privacy. Berlin: Springer, 2015. 131–147
Feizi S, Nemati A, Ahmadi A, et al. A high-speed FPGA implementation of a Bit-slice Ultra-Lightweight block cipher, RECTANGLE. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer and Knowledge Engineering (ICCKE), 2015. 206–211
Biryukov A, Derbez P, Perrin L. Differential analysis and meet-in-the-middle attack against round-reduced TWINE. In: Proceedings of International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption. Berlin: Springer, 2015. 3–27
Bouillaguet C, Derbez P, Fouque P A. Automatic search of attacks on round-reduced AES and applications. In: Proceedings of Annual Cryptology Conference. Berlin: Springer, 2011. 169–187
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61702331, 61472251, 61402280, U1536101), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2017M621471), National Cryptography Development Fund (Grant No. MMJJ20170105), and Science and Technology on Communication Security Laboratory.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yan, H., Luo, Y., Chen, M. et al. New observation on the key schedule of RECTANGLE. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 62, 32108 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-018-9527-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-018-9527-8