A New Approach to Key Schedule Designing

Abstract

Diffusion of key schedule algorithm plays an important role in security of block ciphers. In this paper, we present a new approach to key schedule diffusion analysis by taking the advantages of graph theory modeling. This modeling can help to disclose the weaknesses of key schedules. In this line, the key schedule weaknesses of Twine-128 are shown and an improved key schedule is proposed. In order to make a fair comparison, some parameters are introduced to quantify the diffusion property of key schedule, and compare the results for Twine-128 with both key schedules. The results show that the new key schedule made Twine-128 stronger. Also for more reliability, the results of biclique attack on Twine-128 with both key schedules are compared and the significances of the new one are illustrated.