Security Analysis of Candidates for Authenticated Encryption and Cryptanalytic Attacks to Check Robustness

Abstract

The exponential surge in the computing power of devices and concept of quantum mechanical systems has put the security abilities of traditional block ciphers and public key cryptosystems in peril. Shor’s algorithm postulated by the MIT mathematician Shor, exhumed the threats to RSA. Similarly, various mathematical attacks such as linear and differential cryptanalysis undermined the security of DES and AES to great extent. NIST held a competition to invite proposals from mathematicians and cryptographers around the globe to select an encryption mechanism that guarantees authentication and can replace AES. CAESAR (Competition for Authenticated Encryption: Security, Applicability, and Robustness) competition was held to invite proposals from mathematicians and cryptographers around the globe to select an encryption mechanism that guarantees authentication and can replace AES-GCM. The various design parameters to meet the functional requirements such as tag size were fixed to ensure transparency and level playing ground. This work presents a detailed analysis of three main candidates: ACORN-128, AEGIS-128/256, and AES-OTR. AEGIS and ACORN were one of the finalists selected. Furthermore, various mathematical cryptanalytic attacks and side channel attack scenarios have been examined that could be implemented on these candidate algorithms to check their robustness.