[Resource Topic] 2020/1095: Cycle structure of generalized and closed loop invariants

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Title:
Cycle structure of generalized and closed loop invariants

Authors: Yongzhuang Wei, Rene Rodriguez, Enes Pasalic

Abstract:

This article gives a rigorous mathematical treatment of generalized and closed loop invariants (CLI) which extend the standard notion of (nonlinear) invariants used in the cryptanalysis of block ciphers. Employing the cycle structure of bijective S-box components, we precisely characterize the cardinality of both generalized and CLIs. We demonstrate that for many S-boxes used in practice quadratic invariants (especially useful for mounting practical attacks in cases when the linear layer is an orthogonal matrix) might not exist, whereas there are many quadratic invariants of generalized type (alternatively quadratic CLIs). In particular, it is shown that the inverse mapping S(x)=x^{-1} over GF(2^4) admits quadratic CLIs that additionally possess linear structures. The use of cycle structure is further refined through a novel concept of active cycle set, which turns out to be useful for defining invariants of the whole substitution layer. We present an algorithm for finding such invariants provided the knowledge about the cycle structure of the constituent S-boxes used.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1095

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