Security Arguments Research Articles

Fast AES-Based Universal Hash Functions and MACs

Ultra-fast AES round-based software cryptographic authentication/encryption primitives have recently seen important developments, fuelled by the authenticated encryption competition CAESAR and the prospect of future high-profile applications such as post-5G telecommunication technology security standards. In particular, Universal Hash Functions (UHF) are crucial primitives used as core components in many popular modes of operation for various use-cases, such as Message Authentication Codes (MACs), authenticated encryption, wide block ciphers, etc. In this paper, we extend and improve upon existing design approaches and present a general framework for the construction of UHFs, relying only on the AES round function and 128-bit word-wide XORs. This framework, drawing inspiration from tweakable block ciphers design, allows both strong security arguments and extremely high throughput. The security with regards to differential cryptanalysis is guaranteed thanks to an optimized MILP modelling strategy, while performances are pushed to their limits with a deep study of the details of AES-NI software implementations. In particular, our framework not only takes into account the number of AES-round calls per message block, but also the very important role of XOR operations and the overall scheduling of the computations.We instantiate our findings with two concrete UHF candidates, both requiring only 2 AES rounds per 128-bit message block, and each used to construct two MACs. First, LeMac, a large-state primitive that is the fastest MAC as of today on modern Intel processors, reaching performances of 0.068 c/B on Intel Ice Lake (an improvement of 60% in throughput compared to the state-of-the-art). The second MAC construction, PetitMac, provides an interesting memory/throughput tradeoff, allowing good performances on many platforms.

Role Theory, Non-Coercive Influence, and the Agency of Target States: The Case of Kazakhstan’s Ambassadorial Corps and the Russian Diplomatic Academy

Abstract This article contributes to foreign policy analysis by applying role theory to the study of soft power, evaluating the relationship between a state’s chosen international role(s) and susceptibility to non-coercive influence. I argue that in countries where said role involves committed engagement with varied power poles, elites derive benefits from their various partners and thus abide soft power bases such as the Russian Diplomatic Academy (RDA) without violating the principle of autonomy maximization. I utilize a mixed methods approach, using logistic regression as part of a qualitative case study of Kazakhstan. Drawing on an original dataset of Kazakhstani ambassadors since 1992, I find that foreign policy role better explains the continued presence of RDA-trained diplomats within the Kazakhstani ambassadorial corps than traditional security arguments. This outcome demonstrates the promise of examining soft power through the lens of role theory, with an emphasis on the agency of potential targets of influence.

A Study of Global Trade War and Its Impact on Indian Economy

A Study of Global Trade War and Its Impact on Indian Economy

The quest to end marginalization: Jordan's diversifying alignments in the post‐Arab Spring era

AbstractSince 2017 Jordan has been diversifying its alignments while its relations with its traditional backers have become tenser. Drawing upon the existing literature that explains Jordan's alignment choices, this article aims to understand Jordan's diversification of its alignments and how they evolved in the post‐Arab Uprisings era. It is argued that although the regime security argument and the linkage between external and internal threats for explaining Jordan's alignment decisions have been very useful, to take these arguments further, there is a need to unpack regime security. The article, thus, introduces the importance of the content of the threat and from whom it is perceived to understand this complex interaction between external and domestic threat perceptions and how that interaction affects Jordan's alignment choices.

Propagation of Subspaces in Primitives with Monomial Sboxes: Applications to Rescue and Variants of the AES

Motivated by progress in the field of zero-knowledge proofs, so-called Arithmetization-Oriented (AO) symmetric primitives have started to appear in the literature, such as MiMC, Poseidon or Rescue. Due to the design constraints implied by this setting, these algorithms are defined using simple operations over large (possibly prime) fields. In particular, many rely on simple low-degree monomials for their non-linear layers, essentially using x ↦ x3 as an S-box.In this paper, we show that the structure of the material injected in each round (be it subkeys in a block cipher or round constants in a public permutation) could allow a specific pattern, whereby a well-defined affine space is mapped to another by the round function, and then to another, etc. Such chains of one-dimensional subspaces always exist over 2 rounds, and they can be extended to an arbitrary number of rounds, for any linear layer, provided that the round-constants are well chosen.As a consequence, for several ciphers like Rescue, or a variant of AES with a monomial Sbox, there exist some round-key sequences for which the cipher has an abnormally high differential uniformity, exceeding the size of the Sbox alphabet.Well-known security arguments, in particular based on the wide-trail strategy, have been reused in the AO setting by many designers. Unfortunately, our results show that such a traditional study may not be sufficient to guarantee security. To illustrate this, we present two new primitives (the tweakable block cipher Snare and the permutation-based hash function Stir) that are built using state-of-the-art security arguments, but which are actually deeply flawed. Indeed, the key schedule of Snare ensures the presence of a subspace chain that significantly simplifies an algebraic attack against it, and the round constants of Stir force the presence of a subspace chain aligned with the rate and capacity of the permutation. This in turns implies the existence of many easy-to-find solutions to the so-called CICO problem.

A qualitative cybersecurity analysis of time-triggered communication networks in automotive systems

Security is gaining increasing importance in automotive systems, driven by technical innovations. For example, automotive vehicles become more open systems, allowing the communication with other traffic participants and road infrastructure. Also, automotive vehicles are provided with increased autonomy which raises severe safety concerns, and consequently also security concerns—both concerns that interweave in such systems.In this paper we present a qualitative cybersecurity analysis by comparing different time-triggered (TT) communication networks. While TT communication networks have been analysed extensively for dependability, the contribution of this work is to identify security-related benefits that TT communication networks can provide. In particular, their mechanisms for spacial and temporal encapsulation of network traffic are instrumental to improve network security. The security arguments can be used as a design guide for implementing critical communication in flexible network standards like TSN.

Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol in the Standard Model under Weaker Assumptions

A two-party authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocol allows each of the two parties to share a common secret key over insecure channels, even in the presence of active adversaries who can actively control and modify the exchanged messages. To capture the malicious behaviors of the adversaries, there have been many efforts to define security models. Amongst them, the extended Canetti–Krawczyk (eCK) security model is considered one of the strongest security models and has been widely adopted. In this paper, we present a simple construction of a pairing-based eCK-secure AKE protocol in the standard model. Our protocol can be instantiated with a suitable signature scheme (i.e., an existentially unforgeable signature scheme against adaptive chosen message attacks). The underlying assumptions of our construction are the decisional bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption and the existence of a pseudorandom function. Note that the previous eCK-secure protocol constructions either relied on random oracles for their security or used somewhat strong assumptions, such as the existence of strong-pseudorandom functions, target collision-resistant functions, etc., while our protocol construction uses fewer and more-standard assumptions in the standard model. Furthermore, preserving the same security argument, our protocol can be instantiated with any appropriate signature scheme that comes in the future with better efficiency.

Serbia’s approach to the EU and Russia - implications for its internal and foreign policy

This article examines Serbia?s approach to European integration and relations with Russia and its implications for its internal and foreign policy. Serbia?s policy is characterized as a ?small state? foreign policy designed to maintain good relations with the EU and Russia, believing that this will help it overcome internal and international challenges. In light of the tense relations between the West and Russia, the article examines how this policy has developed over the last two decades and whether it is sustainable in changed international circumstances. It focuses on the fact that Serbia?s approach toward the EU and Russia has shown continuity despite the growing polarization at the international level caused by the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. However, due to the rapid and dramatic deterioration of EU-Russia relations caused by Russia?s attack on Ukraine, Serbia?s current policy has become very difficult to maintain. Serbia?s pragmatic policy, shaped by internal and foreign political interests and guided by a series of economic, legal, and security arguments, was put to the test. These arguments have emerged as new key trends in Serbia and can be traced through the state?s response to the war in Ukraine and the EU and Russia?s responses to the country?s policy. Serbia found itself under pressure from both sides to choose one side over the other, which causes tension and uncertainty and put the country in a difficult position. This article shows that despite the pressure and expectations of both sides, there was no drastic change in Serbia?s policy towards the EU or Russia. However, the fact is that there is less space for the fulfillment of the country?s foreign policy priorities, which now seem mutually incompatible. Therefore, in a broader sense, this article calls into question the sustainability of Serbia?s current foreign policy as a framework for preserving the strategic and national interests of the country.

Comparison of security arguments of promising key encapsulation mechanisms

The study of key encapsulation mechanisms on algebraic lattices is one of the important directions in modern post-quantum cryptography, since many mechanisms are already either standardized (ANSI X.9.98, DSTU 8961:2019 "Skelya") or are promising candidates for standardization (CRYSTALS-Kyber, FrodoKEM). The purpose of this work is to compare the security arguments of DSTU 8961:2019 "Skelya", CRYSTALS-Kyber, FrodoKEM key encapsulation mechanisms. The paper provides a comparison of theoretical evidence in the idealized random oracle (ROM) and quantum random oracle (QROM) models, as well as a comparison of specific values ​of security parameters in the core-SVP model, which is, in fact, a standard for lattice cryptography. Since all three key encapsulation mechanisms are based on different complex problems (NTRU, Module-LWE, LWE), a comparison of complex lattice theory problems and a comparison of their security arguments are additionally given. The strengths and weaknesses of the considered key encapsulation mechanisms are shown, and areas of research that require more detailed attention are highlighted.

Composable Gadgets with Reused Fresh Masks

Albeit its many benefits, masking cryptographic hardware designs has proven to be a non-trivial and error-prone task, even for experienced engineers. Masked variants of atomic logic gates, like AND or XOR – commonly referred to as gadgets – aim to facilitate the process of masking large circuits by offering free composition while sustaining the overall design’s security in the d-probing adversary model. A wide variety of research has already been conducted to (i) find formal properties a gadget must fulfill to guarantee composability and (ii) construct gadgets that fulfill these properties, while minimizing overhead requirements. In all existing composition frameworks like NI/SNI/PINI and all corresponding gadget realizations, the security argument relies on the fact that each gadget requires individual fresh randomness. Naturally, this approach leads to very high randomness requirements of the resulting composed circuit. In this work, we present composable gadgets with reused fresh masks (COMAR), allowing the composition of any first-order secure hardware circuit utilizing only 6 fresh masks in total. By construction, our newly presented gadgets render individual fresh randomness unnecessary, while retaining free composition and first-order security in the robust probing model. More precisely, we give an instantiation of gadgets realizing arbitrary XOR and AND gates with an arbitrary number of inputs which can be trivially extended to all basic logic gates. With these, we break the linear dependency between the number of (non-linear) gates in a circuit and the randomness requirements, hence offering the designers the possibility to highly optimize a masked circuit’s randomness requirements while keeping error susceptibility to a minimum.

Conflicting Sovereignties: Global Conservation, Protected Areas, and Indigenous Nations in the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract Indigenous organizations, international actors, and national authorities portray different images of Indigenous Peoples’ relationship with the natural environment. Based on these images, these actors deploy ecological, economic, and security arguments to create or transform protected areas. By exploring three cases of conflicts over creation and management of protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon, this article maps the tensions around the different images and explores how Indigenous organizations and state authorities—backed by international actors—engage with security, economic, and ecological rationales from their own sovereignty standpoint. I argue that the state weakens Indigenous political aspiration of sovereign territorial control by translating this agenda into depoliticized mechanisms and assumptions of modern international environmentalism, which ultimately limits their capacity to truly contribute to conservation goals. A “nation-building” approach to conservation, by conceiving Indigenous Nations as sovereign partners in environmental management, might give legitimacy to environmental initiatives.

The governance of 5G infrastructure: between path dependency and risk-based approaches

Abstract The fifth generation (5G) wireless technology promises a powerful, reliable and fast infrastructure to match artificial intelligence and Internet of Things developments. But its rollout has stirred strong political tensions around the prominent role that Chinese providers might be allowed to play in building the new networks. Between 2018 and 2020, a few countries have banned—partially or totally—the use of networking equipment produced by Huawei and ZTE, while others have mandated technical and security reviews to mitigate the risks associated with Chinese-origin components in the national 5G infrastructure. This article provides a thematic analysis of the security arguments and policy options emerging in the early days of the 5G debates. Based on key high-level statements, parliamentary debates and legislative acts published from mid-2018 to 2020, we examine perceived risks and threats surfacing in the public discourse, as well as the main regulatory directions emerging in seven countries. Our analysis shows policy alignment across multilateral commitments such as the European Union (EU) or the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. While selected EU member states lean towards risk-based governance and adaptive policies, Five Eyes nations opt for pre-emptive bans of 5G Chinese vendors, revealing path-dependent strategies for the sector. We conclude by discussing the policy reversal experienced by the UK in 2020 and the consolidation of new governance approaches for 5G infrastructure.

Towards a Model of Muslim Women’s Management Empowerment: Philosophical and Historical Evidence and Critical Approaches

This paper constructs a culturally appropriate model for Muslim women’s empowerment in management and leadership positions that addresses sustainability goals of quality education, gender equality, economic growth and reducing inequalities, as well as national and cultural differences from Western women’s empowerment models. The approach to model building begins with two sources of evidence for women’s empowerment—first, the empowerment of women recognised in the Qur’an and Sunnah, and in the historical-biographical record, particularly in the early Islamic period that draws to some extent on hermeneutics. This is followed by identifying four approaches that can be used in constructing a comprehensive model of Muslim women’s empowerment: Bourdieu’s social, cultural and intellectual capital theory; multiple modernities theory that recognises societal diversity; cultural security arguments for the preservation of cultures; and postcolonial critiques that argue for diversity through decolonising. The main argument of this paper is that sustainability goals cannot be achieved without a model appropriate to the valuational, cultural and societal context in which women are educated and work. The final section of this paper proposes a multidimensional and multilevel model that can be used as a guidance for empowering Muslim women in management and leadership positions. The model construction is based partly on Côté and Levine’s psychosocial cultural model that identifies multiple levels and dimensions of identity, role and social institution construction. This article contributes to the current literature by proposing a theoretical foundation and a multidimensional model that can inform and shape the empowerment of Muslim women in management and leadership positions in different societies.

Efficient MILP Modelings for Sboxes and Linear Layers of SPN ciphers

Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solvers are regularly used by designers for providing security arguments and by cryptanalysts for searching for new distinguishers. For both applications, bitwise models are more refined and permit to analyze properties of primitives more accurately than word-oriented models. Yet, they are much heavier than these last ones. In this work, we first propose many new algorithms for efficiently modeling any subset of Fn2 with MILP inequalities. This permits, among others, to model differential or linear propagation through Sboxes. We manage notably to represent the differential behaviour of the AES Sbox with three times less inequalities than before. Then, we present two new algorithms inspired from coding theory to model complex linear layers without dummy variables. This permits us to represent many diffusion matrices, notably the ones of Skinny-128 and AES in a much more compact way. To demonstrate the impact of our new models on the solving time we ran experiments for both Skinny-128 and AES. Finally, our new models allowed us to computationally prove that there are no impossible differentials for 5-round AES and 13-round Skinny-128 with exactly one input and one output active byte, even if the details of both the Sbox and the linear layer are taken into account.

Dasta – Alternative Linear Layer for Rasta

Progress in the areas of multi-party computation (MPC) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) caused the demand of new design strategies, that minimize the number of multiplications in symmetric primitives. Rasta is an approach for a family of stream ciphers with an exceptional low AND depth, which equals the number of ANDs per encrypted bit. This is achieved in particular by randomizing parts of the computation with the help of a PRNG, implying that the security arguments rely on the provided randomness and the encryption/ decryption is potentially slowed down by this generation.In this paper we propose a variant of Rasta that achieves the same performance with respect to the AND depth and the number of ANDs per encrypted bit, but does not rely on a PRNG, i.e. is based on fixed linear layers.

Efficient MILP Modelings for Sboxes and Linear Layers of SPN ciphers

Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solvers are regularly used by designers for providing security arguments and by cryptanalysts for searching for new distinguishers. For both applications, bitwise models are more refined and permit to analyze properties of primitives more accurately than word-oriented models. Yet, they are much heavier than these last ones. In this work, we first propose many new algorithms for efficiently modeling any subset of F n 2 with MILP inequalities. This permits, among others, to model differential or linear propagation through Sboxes. We manage notably to represent the differential behaviour of the AES Sbox with three times less inequalities than before. Then, we present two new algorithms inspired from coding theory to model complex linear layers without dummy variables. This permits us to represent many diffusion matrices, notably the ones of Skinny-128 and AES in a much more compact way. To demonstrate the impact of our new models on the solving time we ran experiments for both Skinny-128 and AES. Finally, our new models allowed us to computationally prove that there are no impossible differentials for 5-round AES and 13-round Skinny-128 with exactly one input and one output active byte, even if the details of both the Sbox and the linear layer are taken into account.

Integrating elaboration likelihood model and herd theory in information security message persuasiveness

Determining how to design persuasive information security messages to increase employees’ engagement in protection-motivated behaviors is an important organizational objective. Information security messages that are argument-based have been shown to effectively elicit employees’ protection-motivated behaviors. The mechanism by which cue-based information security messages persuade employees to engage in protection-motivated behaviors is not clear. This paper applies the lenses of the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and herd theory to propose a comprehensive conceptual model which explains how security argument persuasiveness and popularity cues influence individuals’ cognitive attitude and herd mentality and subsequently influence employees’ protection-motivated behaviors. The results have implications for designing effective information security messages for organizational information security management.

Combiners for AEAD

The Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) primitive, which integrates confidentiality and integrity services under a single roof, found wide-spread adoption in industry and became indispensable in practical protocol design. Recognizing this, academic research put forward a large number of candidate constructions, many of which come with provable security guarantees. Nevertheless, the recent past has shaken up with the discovery of vulnerabilities, some of them fatal, in well-regarded schemes, stemming from weak underlying primitives, flawed security arguments, implementation-level vulnerabilities, and so on. Simply reacting to such findings by replacing broken candidates by better(?) ones is in many cases unduly, costly, and sometimes just impossible. On the other hand, as attack techniques and opportunities change over time, it seems venturous to propose any specific scheme if the intended lifetime of its application is, say, twenty years.In this work we study a workable approach towards increasing the resilience against unforeseen breaks of AEAD primitives. Precisely, we consider the ability to combine two AEAD schemes into one such that the resulting AEAD scheme is secure as long as at least one of its components is (or: as long as at most one component is broken). We propose a series of such combiners, some of which work with fully generic AEAD components while others assume specific internal structures of the latter (like an encrypt-then-MAC design). We complement our results by proving the optimality of our constructions by showing the impossibility of combiners that get along with less invocations of the component algorithms.

Creating Foundations for Secure Microarchitectures With Data-Oblivious ISA Extensions

It is not possible to write microarchitectural side channel-free code on commercial processors today. Even when we try, the resulting code is low performance. This article's goal is to lay an ISA-level foundation, called a Data-Oblivious ISA (OISA) extension, to address these problems. The key idea with an OISA is to explicitly but abstractly specify security policy, so that the policy can be decoupled from the microarchitecture and even the threat model. Analogous to a traditional ISA, this enables an OISA to serve as a portable security-centric abstraction for software while enabling security-aware implementation and optimization flexibility for hardware. The article starts by giving a deep-dive in OISA principles and formal definitions underpinning OISA security. We also provide a concrete OISA built on top of RISC-V, an implementation prototype on the RISC-V BOOM microarchitecture, a formal analysis and security argument, and finally extensive performance evaluation on a range of data-oblivious benchmarks.

Shared Security: A Chinese Perspective of Non-Traditional Security

Common threat and co-morbid realization have diverted the attention of humans toward non-traditional security studies. The real essence of non-traditional security (NTS) is called ‘shared security’. It is not only extension and transformation of security, but it also gives innovation to discourse of NTS studies. The object of shared security is to solve conflicts of human society in general and in diverse conflicts under the Chinese values and contribution in security and diplomacy in particular. Chinese concepts, such as ‘bao he tai he’ (great harmony are preserve in union), ‘wan guoxianning’ (states all enjoy response), ‘he erbu tong’ (harmony but not sameness), and ‘tianxia da tong’ (unity of the world) all embody rich intellectual resources and the growing discourse on ‘shared security’. The Chinese ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ are the symbol of peace and harmony while the origin of share security provided an important ideological and unique value of the cooperation. The contribution of Chinese scholars and the new concepts like new world, common security, human security and global governance have provided the creative possibilities for sharing security argument. This study attempts to link NTS to common threats and develop shared security within Chinese characteristics.