Square attack on Mini-AES and Simplified AES using all variants of active nibble position
Bara Hitapuru, Santi Indarjani · AIP conference proceedings · 2016
Mini-AES and Simplified AES are a miniature of AES. Square Attack is a choosen plaintext attack that choose a Λ – set which is a set of some specific plaintexts. Square Attack had been implemented on Mini-AES with one active nibble. In this research, Square Attack was implemented on Mini-AES and Simplified AES using all variants of active nibble position to figure out all possible characteristics. Next step is finding the key candidate based on those characteristic using three Λ – set of coresponding plaintexts and ciphertexts. From this research, it was proved that Square Attack can be implemented on Mini-AES and Simplified AES to find the true subkey on the second, third, and fourth round aligned with the active nibble position. The tenacity of Mini-AES is as strong as Simplified AES, because both algorithms have the same structure and at least required two Λ – sets to find the true key with 210 data complexity. By getting subkey K3 from applying Square Attack with one active nibble or two active nibble on position (1,4) and (2,3), than finding subkey K0 (seed) directly by exploiting the key schedule algorithm through subkey K3 is more effective than applying on the Square Attack independently on the fourth, third, and second round to obtain K3, K2, and K1 partially.