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I have been reading the Simon Cipher paper. It has the line: "The SIMON key schedules employ a sequence of 1-bit round constants specifically for the purpose of eliminating slide properties and circular shift symmetries", and I am curious.

I have read on the theoretical attack, but I am trying to find an approach to learn about the actual attack. I hope to break the Simon key schedule to make it susceptible to a slide attack and the SIMON32/64 bit-width is small so it might be possible. If I remove the constant z0 that is added to protect from a slide attack, I should be able to succeed in the attack.

Is there a good primer for slide attacks?

forest
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suigin
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1 Answers1

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You should read David Wagner's original paper. You can see all of his work here.

He authored the 'Slide Attack', 'Advanced Slide Attacks' and a few more related to the attack.

Wikipedia has a good introduction here

Feistel ciphers like Simon are very vulnerable to Slide Attacks and similar. Removing the round constants from the key schedule will likley lead to an easy break in the cipher. Partial attacks on the real cipher seem possible if multiple round keys can be forced to collide in a related key attack.

Matthew Fisher
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