Differential Fault and Algebraic Equation Combined Analysis on PICO

Linxi Ding, Hongxin Zhang (), Jun Xu, Xing Fang and Yejing Wu
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Linxi Ding: School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
Hongxin Zhang: School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
Jun Xu: Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, Beijing 100094, China
Xing Fang: Beijing Institute of Computer Technology and Applications, Beijing 100039, China
Yejing Wu: School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China

Mathematics, 2024, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: In modern information technology, research on block cipher security is imperative. Concerning the ultra lightweight block cipher PICO, there has been only one study focused on recovering its complete master key, with a large search space of 2 64 , and no fault analysis yet. This paper proposes a new fault analysis approach, combining differential fault and algebraic equation techniques. It achieved the recovery of PICO’s entire master key with 40 faults in an average time of 0.57 h. S-box decomposition was utilized to optimize our approach, reducing the time by a remarkable 75.83% under the identical 40-fault condition. Furthermore, PICO’s complete master key could be recovered with 28 faults in an average time of 0.78 h, indicating a significant 2 37 reduction in its search space compared to the previous study. This marks the first fault analysis on PICO. Compared to conventional fault analysis methods DFA (differential fault analysis) and AFA (algebraic fault analysis), our approach outperforms in recovering PICO’s entire master key, highlighting the cruciality of key expansion complexity in block cipher security. Therefore, our approach could serve to recover master keys of block ciphers with comparably complicated key expansions, and production of more secure block ciphers could result.

Keywords: PICO; block cipher; differential fault; algebraic equation; S-box decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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