Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper, we revisit the differential meet-in-the-middle attack and classical differential attack on AES-256 under the related-key setting, as introduced in Boura et al.'s ToSC 2023 and Song et al.'s Asiacrypt 2024 works. We propose new attacks against 13-round AES-256, all with significantly lower complexities. This is achieved through an efficient method for identifying weak keys, which enables a better utilization of differential propagation. Furthermore, we present multiple attack scenarios and their complexities by considering various weak keys derived from the key generation process. Our attacks have data complexity between 2 89 and 2 112 and time complexity between 2 189.9 and 2 233.9 depending on the proportion of weak keys that varies from 2 − 11 to 2 − 2 , marking a substantial advance over previous approaches.
DOI: 10.62056/a0qjmpgxq
Institutions: Lund University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique, Institut de Recherche en Informatique et Systèmes Aléatoires, Centre Inria de l'Université de Rennes, Université de Rennes, TCG Crest, Technology Innovation Institute, Indian Statistical Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7119490056