Avalanche effect in improperly initialized CAESAR candidates [MEMICS 2016]

Authors: Martin Ukrop and Petr Švenda

Primary contact: Martin Ukrop mukrop@mail.muni.cz

Abstract: Cryptoprimitives rely on thorough theoretical background, but often lack basic usability features making them prone to unintentional misuse by developers. We argue that this is true even for the state-of-the-art designs. Analyzing 52 candidates of the current CAESAR competition has shown none of them have avalanche effect in authentication tag strong enough to work properly when partially misconfigured. Although not directly decreasing their security profile, this hints at their security usability being less than perfect.

Bibtex (regular paper)

 @InProceedings{2016-memics-ukrop,
   author = {Martin Ukrop and Petr Svenda},
   year = {2016},
   title = {Avalanche Effect in Improperly Initialized CAESAR Candidates},
   editor = {Bouda, Jan and Holík, Lukáš and Kofroň, Jan and Strejček, Jan and Rambousek, Adam},
   booktitle = {Proceedings 11th Doctoral Workshop on Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science, Telč, Czech Republic, 21st-23rd October 2016},
   eventtitle = {MEMICS},
   eventdate = {October 23--25, 2016},
   series = {Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science},
   publisher = {Open Publishing Association},
   volume = {233},
   pages = {72-81},
   doi = {10.4204/EPTCS.233.7}
}