Toward a Fully Secure Authenticated Encryption Scheme from a Pseudorandom Permutation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new block cipher-based authenticated encryption scheme, dubbed the Synthetic Counter with Masking ($\mathsf {SCM}$) mode. $\mathsf {SCM}$ follows the $\mathsf {NSIV}$ paradigm proposed by Peyrin and Seurin (CRYPTO 2016), where a keyed hash function accepts a nonce N with associated data and a message, yielding an authentication tag T, and then the message is encrypted by a counter-like mode using both T and N. Here we move one step further by encrypting nonces; in the encryption part, the inputs to the block cipher are determined by T, counters, and an encrypted nonce, and all its outputs are also masked by an (additional) encrypted nonce, yielding keystream blocks.

As a result, we obtain, for the first time, a block cipher-based authenticated encryption scheme of rate 1/2 that provides n-bit security with respect to the query complexity (ignoring the influence of message length) in the nonce-respecting setting, and at the same time guarantees graceful security degradation in the faulty nonce model, when the underlying n-bit block cipher is modeled as a secure pseudorandom permutation. Seen as a slight variant of $\mathsf {GCM}$-$\mathsf {SIV}$, $\mathsf {SCM}$ is also parallelizable and inverse-free, and its performance is still comparable to $\mathsf {GCM}$-$\mathsf {SIV}$.

J. Lee—This work was supported by Institute for Information & communications Technology Planning & Evaluation(IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2019-0-01343, Regional strategic industry convergence security core talent training business).