Differential-linear cryptanalysis of PRINCE cipher

Abstract

PRINCE is a low-latency lightweight block cipher, which is widely used in a lot of resource constrained devices. It is based on the FX construction and the core component is PRINCEcore. Differential-linear cryptanalysis is a classical cryptographic technique, which combines differential cryptanalysis and linear cryptanalysis together. Short differential characteristics and linear characteristics with high-probability were concatenated to break the cipher. Differential-linear cryptanalysis were applied to attack PRINCEcore. Using 2-round differential-linear distinguisher, 4-round PRINCEcore can be broken with 26 chosen plaintext and 214.58 encryption. For 6-round and 7-round PRINCEcore, the data complexity is 212.84 and 229.02 respectively, and the time complexity is 225.58 and 241.53.

Keywords

• lightweight block cipher
• prince
• differential-linear cryptanalysis