Abstract
The PCBC block cipher mode of operation has many variants, of which one, due to Meyer and Matyas, dates back over 20 years. Whilst a particularly simple variant of PCBC has long been known to be very weak when used for data integrity protection, the Meyer-Matyas variant has not previously been attacked. In this paper we cryptanalyse this mode, and show that it possesses a serious weakness when used for data integrity protection. Specifically, we show how to construct an existential forgery using only a single known ciphertext message and a modest amount of known plaintext (this could be as little as three plaintext blocks). We also describe a ciphertext-only existential forgery attack against another, recently proposed, PCBC-variant called M-PCBC.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Menezes, A.J., van Oorschot, P.C., Vanstone, S.A.: Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press, Boca Raton (1997)
Bellare, M., Kohno, T., Namprempre, C.: Breaking and provably repairing the SSH authenticated encryption scheme: A case study of the encode-then-encrypt and- MAC paradigm. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security 7, 206–241 (2004)
Black, J., Urtubia, H.: Side-channel attacks on symmetric encryption schemes: The case for authenticated encryption. In: Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Security Symposium, San Francisco, CA, USA, August 5-9, pp. 327–338. USENIX (2002)
Canvel, B., Hiltgen, A., Vaudenay, S., Vuagnoux, M.: Password interception in a SSL/TLS channel. In: Boneh, D. (ed.) CRYPTO 2003. LNCS, vol. 2729, pp. 583–599. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Paterson, K.G., Yau, A.: Padding oracle attacks on the ISO CBC mode padding standard. In: Okamoto, T. (ed.) CT-RSA 2004. LNCS, vol. 2964, pp. 305–323. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Vaudenay, S.: Security flaws induced by CBC padding — Applications to SSL, IPSEC,WTLS. In: Knudsen, L.R. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 2002. LNCS, vol. 2332, pp. 534–545. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Rogaway, P., Bellare, M., Black, J.: OCB: A block-cipher mode of operation for efficient authenticated encryption. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security 6, 365–403 (2003)
Bellare, M., Rogaway, P., Wagner, D.: The EAX mode of operation. In: Roy, B., Meier, W. (eds.) FSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3017, pp. 389–407. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): NIST Special Publication 800-38C, Draft Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: The CCM Mode For Authentication and Confidentiality (2003)
Whiting, D., Housley, R., Ferguson, N.: RFC 3610, Counter with CBC-MAC (CCM). Internet Engineering Task Force (2003)
International Organization for Standardization Genève, Switzerland: ISO/IEC WD 19772: 2004, Information technology — Security techniques — Authenticated encryption mechanisms (2004)
Dent, A.W., Mitchell, C.J.: User’s Guide to Cryptography and Standards. Artech House, Norwood (2005)
Sierra, J.M., Hernandez, J.C., Jayaram, N., Ribagorda, A.: Low computational cost integrity for block ciphers. Future Generation Computer Systems 20, 857–863 (2004)
Meyer, C.H., Matyas, S.M.: Cryptography: A new dimension in computer data security. John Wiley and Sons, New York (1982)
Kohl, J.T.: The use of encryption in Kerberos for network authentication. In: Brassard, G. (ed.) CRYPTO 1989. LNCS, vol. 435, pp. 35–43. Springer, Heidelberg (1990)
Steiner, J., Neuman, C., Schiller, J.: Kerberos: an authentication service for open network systems. In: Proceedings: Usenix Association, Winter Conference, Dallas 1988, USENIX Association, Berkeley, California, pp. 191–202 (1988)
Gligor, V.G., Donescu, P.: Integrity-aware PCBC encryption schemes. In: Malcolm, J.A., Christianson, B., Crispo, B., Roe, M. (eds.) Security Protocols 1999. LNCS, vol. 1796, pp. 153–171. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Ferguson, N., Whiting, D., Kelsey, J., Wagner, D.: Critical weaknesses of iaPCBC (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mitchell, C.J. (2005). Cryptanalysis of Two Variants of PCBC Mode When Used for Message Integrity. In: Boyd, C., González Nieto, J.M. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3574. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11506157_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11506157_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26547-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31684-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)