Title: On the Security of the NIST lightweight Finalist Ascon
| Speaker: | Raghvendra Rohit |
| Affiliation: | Technology Institute in Abu Dhabi |
| Zoom: | Please contact Jesse Elliott for zoom link |
Abstract:
The ongoing NIST lightweight cryptographic standardization project for the selection of ciphers which are suitable for constrained environments is in the final stage. The authenticated encryption algorithm Ascon, designed by Dobrauing et al., is one out of the 10 finalists. Ascon is also one of the winners of the CAESAR competition in the lightweight applications category. In this talk, I will present several results on the 7-round Ascon. First, I present new distinguishers and key recovery attacks [1] which are currently the best known ones. We also investigate the security of 7-round Ascon in the weak key setting [2]. Finally, I will give new insights and results related to the differential and linear properties of Ascon [3].
[1] Raghvendra Rohit, Kai Hu, Sumanta Sarkar, Siwei Sun. Misuse-Free Key-Recovery and Distinguishing Attacks on 7-Round Ascon. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2021(1): 130-155 (2021)
[2] Raghvendra Rohit, Santanu Sarkar Diving Deep into the Weak Keys of Round Reduced Ascon. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2021(4): 74-99 (2021)
[3] Rusydi H Makarim, Raghvendra Rohit. Toward Tight Differential Bounds of Ascon. In Submission.