Analysis of linear relationships in block ciphers

This thesis is devoted to the study of linear relationships in symmetric block ciphers. A block cipher is designed so that the ciphertext is produced as a nonlinear function of the plaintext and secret master key. However, linear relationships within the cipher can still exist if the texts and components of the cipher are manipulated in a number of ways, as shown in this thesis. There are four main contributions of this thesis. The first contribution is the extension of the applicability of integral attacks from word-based to bitbased block ciphers. Integral attacks exploit the linear relationship between texts at intermediate stages of encryption. This relationship can be used to recover subkey bits in a key recovery attack. In principle, integral attacks can be applied to bit-based block ciphers. However, specific tools to define the attack on these ciphers are not available. This problem is addressed in this thesis by introducing a refined set of notations to describe the attack. The bit patternbased integral attack is successfully demonstrated on reduced-round variants of the block ciphers Noekeon, Present and Serpent. The second contribution is the discovery of a very small system of equations that describe the LEX-AES stream cipher. LEX-AES is based heavily on the 128-bit-key (16-byte) Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) block cipher. In one instance, the system contains 21 equations and 17 unknown bytes. This is very close to the upper limit for an exhaustive key search, which is 16 bytes. One only needs to acquire 36 bytes of keystream to generate the equations. Therefore, the security of this cipher depends on the difficulty of solving this small system of equations. The third contribution is the proposal of an alternative method to measure diffusion in the linear transformation of Substitution-Permutation-Network (SPN) block ciphers. Currently, the branch number is widely used for this purpose. It is useful for estimating the possible success of differential and linear attacks on a particular SPN cipher. However, the measure does not give information on the number of input bits that are left unchanged by the transformation when producing the output bits. The new measure introduced in this thesis is intended to complement the current branch number technique. The measure is based on fixed points and simple linear relationships between the input and output words of the linear transformation. The measure represents the average fraction of input words to a linear diffusion transformation that are not effectively changed by the transformation. This measure is applied to the block ciphers AES, ARIA, Serpent and Present. It is shown that except for Serpent, the linear transformations used in the block ciphers examined do not behave as expected for a random linear transformation. The fourth contribution is the identification of linear paths in the nonlinear round function of the SMS4 block cipher. The SMS4 block cipher is used as a standard in the Chinese Wireless LAN Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) and hence, the round function should exhibit a high level of nonlinearity. However, the findings in this thesis on the existence of linear relationships show that this is not the case. It is shown that in some exceptional cases, the first four rounds of SMS4 are effectively linear. In these cases, the effective number of rounds for SMS4 is reduced by four, from 32 to 28. The findings raise questions about the security provided by SMS4, and might provide clues on the existence of a flaw in the design of the cipher.

Linearity within the SMS4 Block Cipher

We present several new observations on the SMS4 block cipher, and discuss their cryptographic significance. The crucial observation is the existence of fixed points and also of simple linear relationships between the bits of the input and output words for each component of the round functions for some input words. This implies that the non-linear function T of SMS4 does not appear random and that the linear transformation provides poor diffusion. Furthermore, the branch number of the linear transformation in the key scheduling algorithm is shown to be less than optimal. The main security implication of these observations is that the round function is not always non-linear. Due to this linearity, it is possible to reduce the number of effective rounds of SMS4 by four. We also investigate the susceptibility of SMS4 to further cryptanalysis. Finally, we demonstrate a successful differential attack on a slightly modified variant of SMS4. These findings raise serious questions on the security provided by SMS4.

Rijndael FPGA implementations utilising look-up tables

This paper presents single-chip FPGA Rijndael algorithm implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm, Rijndael. In particular, the designs utilise look-up tables to implement the entire Rijndael Round function. A comparison is provided between these designs and similar existing implementations. Hardware implementations of encryption algorithms prove much faster than equivalent software implementations and since there is a need to perform encryption on data in real time, speed is very important. In particular, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are well suited to encryption implementations due to their flexibility and an architecture, which can be exploited to accommodate typical encryption transformations. In this paper, a Look-Up Table (LUT) methodology is introduced where complex and slow operations are replaced by simple LUTs. A LUT-based fully pipelined Rijndael implementation is described which has a pre-placement performance of 12 Gbits/sec, which is a factor 1.2 times faster than an alternative design in which look-up tables are utilised to implement only one of the Round function transformations, and 6 times faster than other previous single-chip implementations. Iterative Rijndael implementations based on the Look-Up-Table design approach are also discussed and prove faster than typical iterative implementations.

Cryptanalysis of the 10-Round Hash and Full Compression Function of SHAvite-3-512

In this paper, we analyze the SHAvite-3-512 hash function, as proposed and tweaked for round 2 of the SHA-3 competition. We present cryptanalytic results on 10 out of 14 rounds of the hash function SHAvite-3-512, and on the full 14 round compression function of SHAvite-3-512. We show a second preimage attack on the hash function reduced to 10 rounds with a complexity of 2497 compression function evaluations and 216 memory. For the full 14-round compression function, we give a chosen counter, chosen salt preimage attack with 2384 compression function evaluations and 2128 memory (or complexity 2448 without memory), and a collision attack with 2192 compression function evaluations and 2128 memory.

A Divine Round Trip: the Literary and Christological Function of the Descent/Ascent Leitmotif in the Gospel of John

The thesis of this dissertation is that the Descent/Ascent Leitmotif, which includes the language of not only descending and ascending, but also going, coming, and being sent, performs a significant literary and christological function in the Gospel of John. The Evangelist's Descent/Ascent Leitmotif becomes the Gospel's organizing principal, drawing together a constellation of verbs and a number of themes, including Jesus-Son's origin, identity, relationship to God, authority, signs and works, life, and glory. In the introductory chapter, after providing a layout of the dissertation, the discussion turns to the spacial dimensions and christological importance of the vertical and horizontal depictions of the descending, ascending, coming, going, and being sent verbs. The focus of chapter two is to explain and illustrate, using a version of the Cinderella story, a method that serves to identify the Leitmotif and the verbs, motifs, and themes the Leitmotif draws within its constellation. This approach, titled a thematic structural method, integrates works from thematic scholars Horst Daemmrich and Eugene Falk with works from literary structural scholars A. J Greimas and Roland Barthes, and is a tool to analyze the influence of the Leitmotif as the Gospel's organizing principal on the relationships between the Leitmotif and numerous themes from which John's Christology emerges. The task of chapter three is to explain the rationale for the selection of the Leitmotif's verbs of descending, ascending, coming, going, and being sent. Chapters four and five investigate how the Evangelist, with the repetition of the Leitmotif, constructs his narrative to tell the story of the historical Jesus and shape the Evangelist's Christology. Additionally, the focus is to analyze the transforming influences of the Descent/Ascent Leitmotif on the themes of Jesus-Son's origin, identity, relationship to the Father, and authority, through his signs and works, life, and glory. The Descent/Ascent Leitmotif depicts a divine round trip, and the emphasis of chapter six is to examine the role of the Leitmotif in Jesus-Son's departure from the world and return to God. The Evangelist's use of the Leitmotif in Jesus' prayer to the Father (John 17) and the promise of the Paraclete are included in this chapter. Due to the Descent/Ascent Leitmotif's inherent spatial overtones, elements related to Jesus' return, including heaven, world, the hour, and his form after his resurrection, are explored from a cosmological and ontological perspective.

Rotational cryptanalysis of round-reduced Keccak

In this paper we attack round-reduced Keccak hash function with a technique called rotational cryptanalysis. We focus on Keccak variants proposed as SHA-3 candidates in the NIST’s contest for a new standard of cryptographic hash function. Our main result is a preimage attack on 4-round Keccak and a 5-round distinguisher on Keccak-f[1600] permutation — the main building block of Keccak hash function.

Changes in testicular function following specific deprivation of LH in the adult male rabbit

Sexually mature male rabbits actively immunized against highly purified ovine LH (oLH) were used as a model system to study the effects of endogenous LH deprivation (and therefore testosterone) on spermatogenesis as well as pituitary FSH secretion. Immunization against oLH generated antibody titres capable of cross-reacting and neutralizing rabbit LH and this resulted in a significant reduction (P<0.01) in serum testosterone levels by 2-4 weeks of immunization. A significant increase in circulating FSH concentration (from a basal level of similar to 1 ng to 60-100 ng/ml; P<0.01) was observed within 4-6 weeks of immunization, perhaps a consequence of the negative feedback effect of the lack of testosterone. The effect of LH deprivation on spermatogenesis assessed by DNA flow cytometry and histological analyses of testicular biopsy tissue revealed that lack of testosterone primarily results in a rapid reduction and complete absence of round (1C) and elongated (HC) spermatids. The immediate effect of LH/testosterone deprivation thus appears to be at the step of meiotic transformation of primary spermatocytes (4C) to 1C. A significant reduction (>80%; P<0.01) in the 4C population and a relative accumulation (>90%; P<0.01) in spermatogonia (2C) was also observed, suggesting a need for testosterone during the transformation of 2C to 1C. In all but one of the rabbits, both qualitative and quantitative recovery in spermatogenesis occurred during the recovery phase, even at a time when only a marginal increase in serum testosterone (compared with the preimmunization) levels was observed as a result of a rapid decline in the cross-reactive antibody titres. These results clearly show that LH/testosterone deprivation in addition to primarily affecting the meiotic step also regulates the conversion of 2C to 4C during spermatogenesis.

Learning Multirobot Hose Transportation and Deployment by Distributed Round-Robin Q-Learning

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) algorithms face two main difficulties: the curse of dimensionality, and environment non-stationarity due to the independent learning processes carried out by the agents concurrently. In this paper we formalize and prove the convergence of a Distributed Round Robin Q-learning (D-RR-QL) algorithm for cooperative systems. The computational complexity of this algorithm increases linearly with the number of agents. Moreover, it eliminates environment non sta tionarity by carrying a round-robin scheduling of the action selection and execution. That this learning scheme allows the implementation of Modular State-Action Vetoes (MSAV) in cooperative multi-agent systems, which speeds up learning convergence in over-constrained systems by vetoing state-action pairs which lead to undesired termination states (UTS) in the relevant state-action subspace. Each agent's local state-action value function learning is an independent process, including the MSAV policies. Coordination of locally optimal policies to obtain the global optimal joint policy is achieved by a greedy selection procedure using message passing. We show that D-RR-QL improves over state-of-the-art approaches, such as Distributed Q-Learning, Team Q-Learning and Coordinated Reinforcement Learning in a paradigmatic Linked Multi-Component Robotic System (L-MCRS) control problem: the hose transportation task. L-MCRS are over-constrained systems with many UTS induced by the interaction of the passive linking element and the active mobile robots.

Sea surface height and transport stream function of the South China Sea from a variable-grid global ocean circulation model

A fine-grid model (1/6degrees) covering the South China Sea (SCS), East China Sea and Japan/East Sea, which is embedded into a coarse-grid (3degrees) global model, was established to study the SCS circulation. In the present paper, we report the model-produced monthly and annual mean transport stream functions and sea surface heights(SSH) and their anomalies of the SCS. Comparison to the TOPEX/Poseidon data shows that the model-produced monthly sea surface height anomalies (SSHA) are in good agreement with altimeter measurements. Based on the results, the circulation of the SCS, especially the upper layer circulation, is discussed. In the surface layer, the western Philippine Sea water intrudes into the SCS through the Luzon Strait in autumn, winter and spring, but not in summer. However, as far as the whole water column is concerned, the water intrudes into the SCS through the Luzon Strait all the year round. This indicates that in summer the water still intrudes into the SCS in the subsurface and intermediate layers. The area near the northern continental slope of the SCS is dominated by a cyclonic circulation all the year round. The SCS Southern Anticyclonic Gyre, SE Vietnam Off-Shore Current in summertime and SCS Southern Cyclonic Gyre in wintertime are reproduced reasonably. The difference between the monthly averaged SSH and SSHA is significant, indicating the importance of the mean SSH in the SCS circulation.

The effects of osmotic stress on the structure and function of the cell nucleus.

Osmotic stress is a potent regulator of the normal function of cells that are exposed to osmotically active environments under physiologic or pathologic conditions. The ability of cells to alter gene expression and metabolic activity in response to changes in the osmotic environment provides an additional regulatory mechanism for a diverse array of tissues and organs in the human body. In addition to the activation of various osmotically- or volume-activated ion channels, osmotic stress may also act on the genome via a direct biophysical pathway. Changes in extracellular osmolality alter cell volume, and therefore, the concentration of intracellular macromolecules. In turn, intracellular macromolecule concentration is a key physical parameter affecting the spatial organization and pressurization of the nucleus. Hyper-osmotic stress shrinks the nucleus and causes it to assume a convoluted shape, whereas hypo-osmotic stress swells the nucleus to a size that is limited by stretch of the nuclear lamina and induces a smooth, round shape of the nucleus. These behaviors are consistent with a model of the nucleus as a charged core/shell structure pressurized by uneven partition of macromolecules between the nucleoplasm and the cytoplasm. These osmotically-induced alterations in the internal structure and arrangement of chromatin, as well as potential changes in the nuclear membrane and pores are hypothesized to influence gene transcription and/or nucleocytoplasmic transport. A further understanding of the biophysical and biochemical mechanisms involved in these processes would have important ramifications for a range of fields including differentiation, migration, mechanotransduction, DNA repair, and tumorigenesis.

CoastColour Round Robin datasets: a database to evaluate the performance of algorithms for the retrieval of water quality parameters in coastal waters.

The use of in situ measurements is essential in the validation and evaluation of the algorithms that provide coastal water quality data products from ocean colour satellite remote sensing. Over the past decade, various types of ocean colour algorithms have been developed to deal with the optical complexity of coastal waters. Yet there is a lack of a comprehensive intercomparison due to the availability of quality checked in situ databases. The CoastColour Round Robin (CCRR) project, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), was designed to bring together three reference data sets using these to test algorithms and to assess their accuracy for retrieving water quality parameters. This paper provides a detailed description of these reference data sets, which include the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) level 2 match-ups, in situ reflectance measurements, and synthetic data generated by a radiative transfer model (HydroLight). These data sets, representing mainly coastal waters, are available from doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.841950. The data sets mainly consist of 6484 marine reflectance (either multispectral or hyperspectral) associated with various geometrical (sensor viewing and solar angles) and sky conditions and water constituents: total suspended matter (TSM) and chlorophyll a (CHL) concentrations, and the absorption of coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM). Inherent optical properties are also provided in the simulated data sets (5000 simulations) and from 3054 match-up locations. The distributions of reflectance at selected MERIS bands and band ratios, CHL and TSM as a function of reflectance, from the three data sets are compared. Match-up and in situ sites where deviations occur are identified. The distributions of the three reflectance data sets are also compared to the simulated and in situ reflectances used previously by the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG, 2006) for algorithm testing, showing a clear extension of the CCRR data which covers more turbid waters.

The position effect of structural Eucalyptus round timber on the flexural modulus of elasticity

A madeira roliça possui grande emprego nas construções civis, desempenhando a função de vigas, colunas, fundações, postes para distribuição de energia elétrica, entre outras, apresentando a vantagem de não ser processada, como é o caso da madeira serrada. O projeto envolvendo elementos roliços requer, além de outras variáveis estruturais, o conhecimento do módulo de elasticidade. No Brasil, os documentos normativos que tratam da determinação das propriedades de rigidez e resistência para peças roliças de madeira estão em vigência há mais de vinte anos sem revisão técnica. A madeira roliça, por geralmente possuir eixo com curvatura não nula, pode apresentar, segundo a posição da peça no ensaio de flexão, valores diferentes do módulo de elasticidade. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisara influência da posição de peças roliças de madeira de Eucalyptus grandis na determinação do módulo de elasticidade na flexão. O ensaio de flexão utilizado é o de três pontos, sendo cada peça avaliada em duas posições distintas, definidas mediante o giro da seção transversal em torno do eixo. Os resultados encontrados indicam a necessidade do ensaio de flexão em, pelo menos, duas posições distintas da peça.

The CoastColour Round Robin datasets: a database to evaluate the performance of algorithms for the retrieval of water quality parameters in coastal waters

The CoastColour project Round Robin (CCRR) project (http://www.coastcolour.org) funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) was designed to bring together a variety of reference datasets and to use these to test algorithms and assess their accuracy for retrieving water quality parameters. This information was then developed to help end-users of remote sensing products to select the most accurate algorithms for their coastal region. To facilitate this, an inter-comparison of the performance of algorithms for the retrieval of in-water properties over coastal waters was carried out. The comparison used three types of datasets on which ocean colour algorithms were tested. The description and comparison of the three datasets are the focus of this paper, and include the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) Level 2 match-ups, in situ reflectance measurements and data generated by a radiative transfer model (HydroLight). The datasets mainly consisted of 6,484 marine reflectance associated with various geometrical (sensor viewing and solar angles) and sky conditions and water constituents: Total Suspended Matter (TSM) and Chlorophyll-a (CHL) concentrations, and the absorption of Coloured Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM). Inherent optical properties were also provided in the simulated datasets (5,000 simulations) and from 3,054 match-up locations. The distributions of reflectance at selected MERIS bands and band ratios, CHL and TSM as a function of reflectance, from the three datasets are compared. Match-up and in situ sites where deviations occur are identified. The distribution of the three reflectance datasets are also compared to the simulated and in situ reflectances used previously by the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG, 2006) for algorithm testing, showing a clear extension of the CCRR data which covers more turbid waters.