WBMatrix: An Optimized Matrix Library for White-Box Block Cipher Implementations

Abstract

White-box block cipher (WBC) has been proposed by Chow \textit{et al.} to prevent the secret key to be extracted from its implementation in an untrusted context. A pivotal technique behind WBC is to convert the iterated round functions into a series of look-up tables (LUTs) with encodings. The construction of encoded LUTs consists of matrix operations, such as multiplication and inversion. The widely-used matrix libraries in applications, such as open-source NTL and M4RI, are primarily designed for large dimensional matrix operations. Therefore, they might not be suitable for WBC implementations which are mainly based on small-scale matrices and vectors. In this paper, we propose a new matrix library named WBMatrix for the optimization of WBC implementations. WBMatrix reduces the operating steps of multiplication and simultaneously generates pairwise invertible matrices as encodings. The performance comparison supports that WBMatrix improves the table construction and encryption phases on Intel x86 and ARMv8 platforms. Moreover, WBMatrix also boosts the initialization and encryption phases of LowMC/LowMC-M block ciphers and enhances the performance for the generation of key-dependent Sbox.