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QLW: a lightweight block cipher with high diffusion

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Abstract

Lightweight block ciphers are critical for ensuring secure data transmission in resource-limited Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In designing secure and efficient lightweight block ciphers, balancing diffusion property and resource consumption becomes a key metric. This paper proposes QLW, a highly diffusive lightweight block cipher, designed to meet the growing security needs of resource-constrained devices. QLW employs a combined variant form of generalized Feistel structure (GFS) and Lai–Massey structure as its underlying structure. The QLW round function adopts a GFS, refined into a double half-round structure. The branch XOR and F-function utilize the Lai–Massey structure. Under the combined effect of both, QLW achieves full diffusion with just two rounds. Meanwhile, the QLW cipher uses a standard genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize a 4-bit S-box, ensuring robust security. The final S-box design occupies only 15.01 gate equivalents (GE) and requires eight logic gates, minimizing hardware overhead. Moreover, QLW achieves high diffusion with low-resource consumption using a linear matrix built from bitwise operations and logic gates. Furthermore, the QLW cipher increases the unpredictability of the rotation by incorporating a dynamic round constant T from the key schedule, enhancing resistance to algebraic attacks. Finally, the QLW is subjected to a security evaluation and hardware implementation. The results demonstrate that the hardware implementation of QLW requires only 1655.26 GE of area, consumes 7.37 \(\upmu \)J/bit of energy, and is resistant to known attacks such as differential cryptanalysis, linear cryptanalysis, and integral attack, with good security redundancy.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2022JJ30103 and 2022JJ50016), the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province (2016TP1020), and “the 14th Five-Year Plan” Key Disciplines and Application-oriented Special Disciplines of Hunan Province (Xiangjiaotong [2022] 351).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Technology, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421002, China

    Xingqi Yue, Lang Li, Qiuping Li, Jiahao Xiang & Zhiwen Hu

  2. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing and Application, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421002, China

    Xingqi Yue, Lang Li, Qiuping Li, Jiahao Xiang & Zhiwen Hu

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  1. Xingqi Yue
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Contributions

Xingqi Yue helped in conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing, visualization, reviewing, and editing. Lang Li helped in methodology, investigation, resources, writing, supervision, and project administration. Qiuping Li helped in validation and writing. Jiahao Xiang helped in methodology, software, resources, writing, and visualization. Zhiwen Hu helped in conceptualization and data curation.

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Correspondence to Lang Li.

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Yue, X., Li, L., Li, Q. et al. QLW: a lightweight block cipher with high diffusion. J Supercomput 81, 224 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06707-4

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