In this paper, we explore the security of single-key Even-Mansour ciphers against key-recovery attacks. First, we introduce a simple key-recovery attack using key relations on an n-bit r-round single-key Even-Mansour cipher (r-SEM). This attack is feasible with queries of DTr=O(2rn) and $2^{rac{2r}{r + 1}n}$ memory accesses, which is $2^{rac{1}{r + 1}n}$ times smaller than the previous generic attacks on r-SEM, where D and T are the number of queries to the encryption function EK and the internal permutation P, respectively. Next, we further reduce the time complexity of the key recovery attack on 2-SEM by a start-in-the-middle approach. This is the first attack that is more efficient than an exhaustive key search while keeping the query bound of DT2=O(22n). Finally, we leverage the start-in-the-middle approach to directly improve the previous attacks on 2-SEM by Dinur et al., which exploit t-way collisions of the underlying function. Our improved attacks do not keep the bound of DT2=O(22n), but are the most time-efficient attacks among the existing ones. For n=64, 128 and 256, our attack is feasible with the time complexity of about $2^{n} cdot rac{1}{2 n}$ in the chosen-plaintext model, while Dinur et al.'s attack requires $2^{n} cdot rac{{ m log}(n)}{ n} $ in the known-plaintext model.

We propose new key recovery attacks on the two-round single-key n-bit Even-Mansour ciphers (2SEM) that are secure up to 22n/3 queries against distinguishing attacks proved by Chen et al. Our attacks are based on the meet-in-the-middle technique which can significantly reduce the data complexity. In particular, we introduce novel matching techniques which enable us to compute one of the two permutations without knowing a part of the key information. Moreover, we present two improvements of the proposed attack: one significantly reduces the data complexity and the other reduces the time complexity. Compared with the previously known attacks, our attack first breaks the birthday barrier on the data complexity although it requires chosen plaintexts. When the block size is 64 bits, our attack reduces the required data from 245 known plaintexts to 226 chosen plaintexts with keeping the time complexity required by the previous attacks. Furthermore, by increasing the time complexity up to 262, the required data is further reduced to 28, and DT=270, where DT is the product of data and time complexities. We show that our data-optimized attack requires DT=2n+6 in general cases. Since the proved lower bound on DT for the single-key one-round n-bit Even-Mansour ciphers is 2n, our results imply that adding one round to one-round constructions does not sufficiently improve the security against key recovery attacks. Finally, we propose a time-optimized attacks on 2SEM in which, we aim to minimize the number of the invocations of internal permutations.

Kiasu-BC is a recently proposed tweakable variant of the AES-128 block cipher. The designers of Kiasu-BC claim that no more than 7-round Meet-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack can be launched against it. In this letter, we present a MitM attack, utilizing the differential enumeration technique, on the 8-round reduced cipher. The attack has time complexity of 2116 encryptions, memory complexity of 286 128-bit blocks, and data complexity of 2116 plaintext-tweak combinations.

In this letter, we present a meet-in-the-middle attack on the 7-round reduced block cipher Kalyna-b/2b, which has been approved as the new encryption standard of Ukraine (DSTU 7624:2014) in 2015. According to its designers, the cipher provides strength to several cryptanalytic methods after the fifth and sixth rounds of the versions with block length of 128 and 256 bits, respectively. Our attack is based on the differential enumeration approach, where we carefully deploy a four-round distinguisher in the first four rounds to bypass the effect of the carry bits resulting from the prewhitening modular key addition. We also exploit the linear relation between consecutive odd and even indexed round keys, which enables us to attack seven rounds and recover all the round keys incrementally. The attack on Kalyna with 128-bit block has a data complexity of 289 chosen plaintexts, time complexity of 2230.2 and a memory complexity of 2202.64. The data, time and memory complexities of our attack on Kalyna with 256-bit block are 2233, 2502.2 and 2170, respectively.

In this letter, we present a meet-in-the-middle attack on the 5-round reduced Kuznyechik cipher which has been recently chosen to be standardized by the Russian federation. Our attack is based on the differential enumeration approach. However, the application of the exact approach is not successful on Kuznyechik due to its optimal round diffusion properties. Accordingly, we adopt an equivalent representation for the last round where we can efficiently filter ciphertext pairs and launch the attack in the chosen ciphertext setting. We also utilize partial sequence matching which further reduces the memory and time complexities. For the 5-round reduced cipher, the 256-bit master key is recovered with an online time complexity of 2140.3, a memory complexity of 2153.3, and a data complexity of 2113.

In this paper, generic attacks are presented against hash functions that are constructed by a hashing mode instantiating a Feistel or generalized Feistel networks with an SP-round function. It is observed that the omission of the network twist in the last round can be a weakness against preimage attacks. The first target is a standard Feistel network with an SP round function. Up to 11 rounds can be attacked in generic if a condition on a key schedule function is satisfied. The second target is a 4-branch type-2 generalized Feistel network with an SP round function. Up to 15 rounds can be attacked in generic. These generic attacks are then applied to hashing modes of ISO standard ciphers Camellia-128 without FL and whitening layers and CLEFIA-128.

CLEFIA is a 128-bit block cipher proposed by Shirai et al. at FSE2007. It has been reported that CLEFIA has a 9-round saturation characteristic, in which 32bits of the output of 9-th round 112-th order differential equals to zero. By using this characteristic, a 14-round CLEFIA with 256-bit secret key is attacked with 2113 blocks of chosen plaintext and 2244.5 times of data encryption. In this paper, we focused on a higher order differential of CLEFIA. This paper introduces two new concepts for higher order differential which are control transform for the input and observation transform for the output. With these concepts, we found a new 6-round saturation characteristic, in which 24bits of the output of 6-th round 9-th order differential equals to zero. We also show a new 9-round saturation characteristic using 105-th order differential which is a 3-round extension of the 6-round one. If we use it, instead of 112-th order differential, using the meet-in-the-middle attack technique for higher order differential table, the data and computational complexity for the attack to 14-round CLEFIA can be reduced to around 2-5, 2-34 of the conventional attack, respectively.

This is a study on a certain group theoretic property of the set of encryption functions of a block cipher. We have shown how to construct a subset which has this property in a given symmetric group by a computer algebra software GAP4.2 (Groups, Algorithms, and Programming, Version 4.2). These observations on group structures of block ciphers suggest us that we may be able to set a trapdoor based on meet-in-the-middle attack on block ciphers.

We analyze the security of iterated 2m-bit hash functions with rate 1 whose round functions use a block cipher with an m-bit input (output) and a 2m-bit key. We first show a preimage attack with O(2m) complexity on Yi and Lam's hash function of this type. This means that their claim is wrong and it is less secure than MDC-2. Next, it is shown that a very wide class of such functions is also less secure than MDC-2. More precisely, we prove that there exist a preimage attack and a 2nd preimage attack with O(2m) complexity and a collision attack with O(23m/4) complexity, respectively. Finally, we suggest a class of hash functions with a 2m-bit hashed value which seem to be as secure as MDC-2.