Ultra Low-Latency Block Cipher uLBC
Authors
Guoxiao Liu, Qingyuan Yu, Liyuan Tang, Shihe Ma, Congming Wei, Keting Jia, Lingyue Qin, Xiaoyang Dong, Yantian Shen
Qingyuan Yu
School of Cyber Science and Technology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China
Key Laboratory of Cryptologic Technology and Information Security, Jinan, China
yuqy at mail dot sdu dot edu dot cn
Key Laboratory of Cryptologic Technology and Information Security, Jinan, China
yuqy at mail dot sdu dot edu dot cn
Keting Jia
Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
ktjia at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
ktjia at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
Lingyue Qin
Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
qinly at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
qinly at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
Xiaoyang Dong
Institute for Network Sciences and Cyberspace, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
xiaoyangdong at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing, China
BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
xiaoyangdong at tsinghua dot edu dot cn
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in low-latency ciphers. Since the first low-latency block cipher PRINCE was proposed at ASIACRYPT 2012, many low-latency primitives sprung up, such as Midori, MANTIS, QARMA and SPEEDY. Some ciphers, like SPEEDY and Orthros, introduce bit permutations to achieve reduced delay. However, this approach poses a challenge in evaluating the resistance against some cryptanalysis, especially differential and linear attacks. SPEEDY-7-192, was fully broken by Boura et.al. using differential attack, for example. In this paper, we manage to propose a novel low-latency block cipher, which guarantees security against differential and linear attacks. Revisiting the permutation technique used in Orthros, we investigate the selection of nibble permutations and propose a method for selecting them systematically rather than relying on random search. Our new nibble permutation method ensures the existence of impossible differential and differential trails for up to 8 rounds, while the nibble permutations for both branches of Orthros may lead to a 9-round impossible differential trail. Furthermore, we introduce a new approach for constructing low-latency coordinate functions for 4-bit S-boxes, which involves a more precise delay computation compared to traditional methods based solely on circuit depth. The new low-latency primitive uLBC we propose, is a family of 128-bit block ciphers, with three different versions of key length, respectively 128-bit and 256-bit key, as well as a 384-bit tweakey version with variable-length key. According to the key length, named uLBC-128, uLBC-256 and uLBC-384t. Our analysis shows that uLBC-128 exhibits lower latency and area requirements compared to ciphers such as QARMA9-128 and Midori128. On performance, uLBC-128 has excellent AT performance, the best performance except SPEEDY-6, and even the best performance in UMC 55nm in our experiments.
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History
Submitted: 2024-10-08
Accepted: 2024-12-03
Published: 2025-01-13
Accepted: 2024-12-03
Published: 2025-01-13
How to cite
Guoxiao Liu, Qingyuan Yu, Liyuan Tang, Shihe Ma, Congming Wei, Keting Jia, Lingyue Qin, Xiaoyang Dong, and Yantian Shen, Ultra Low-Latency Block Cipher uLBC. IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 1, no. 4, Jan 13, 2025, doi: 10.62056/a63zzoja5.
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