Analysis of iterated block ciphers

Abstract

A block cipher is the foundation stone of symmetric-key cryptography. Due to its simplicity and high performance, it is often the workhorse for providing confidentiality - one of the primary goals of cryptography. Hence the security of a block cipher is of fundamental importance in the entire infrastructure of cryptography, and therefore block ciphers shall be analyzed and evaluated. This practice is called block cipher cryptanalysis. In this thesis, we analyze a few block ciphers in the classic meet-in-the-middle model and in the recently proposed multidimensional linear cryptanalysis model. Besides for encryption, block ciphers are also one of the most versatile building blocks used for constructing many other cryptographic primitives. One such example is the compression function of cryptographic hash functions, and there is a close relation between the security analysis of block ciphers and hash functions. In addition, many dedicated cryptographic hash functions are designed with ideas used in block ciphers. Therefore, it is natural that many block cipher cryptanalysis techniques can be transferred to hash function analysis. In this thesis, we analyze hash functions with differential cryptanalysis and techniques inspired by differential cryptanalysis. On the other hand, recent advances in hash function cryptanalysis contribute to the analysis of block ciphers. We give one such example too.