Block ciphers : security proofs, cryptanalysis, design, and fault attacks/
G. Piret · 2005
Block ciphers are widely used building blocks for secure communication systems; their purpose is to ensure confidentiality of the data exchanged through such systems, while achieving high performance. In this context, a variety of aspects must be taken into account. Primarily, they must be secure. The security of a block cipher is usually assessed by testing its resistance against known attacks. However as attacks may exist that are currently unknown, generic security proofs are also tried to be obtained. On the other hand, another attack methodology is also worth considering. Contrary to the others, it aims at the implementation of the algorithm rather than the cipher itself. It is known as side-channel analysis. Finally, performance of a block cipher in terms of throughput is very important as well. More than any other cryptographic primitive, block ciphers allow a tradeoff to be made between security and performance. In this thesis, contributions are given regarding these various topics. In the first part of the thesis, we deal with two particular types of attacks, namely the square attack and key schedule cryptanalysis. We also consider security proofs in the so-called Luby-Rackoff model, which deals with adversaries having unbounded computation capabilities. More precisely, we are interested in the Misty structure, when the round functions are assumed to be involutions. The second part of the thesis is devoted to design and implementation aspects. First, we present a fault attack on substitution-permutation networks, which requires as few as two faulty ciphertexts to retrieve the key. We also study the security of DeKaRT, which is an algorithm intended to protect smart cards against probing attacks. Finally we present the design of ICEBERG, a block cipher deliberately oriented towards good performance in hardware, and give an adequate analysis of its security.