Nonlinear degree of Ascon permutation

Authors

  • Victor Ruzhentsev Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics

Abstract

An estimation of the nonlinear degrees for the forward and inverse permutations of the Ascon algorithm is made in this work. This estimation is made by analyzing higher order differentials.

The obtained results of nonlinear degree are significantly lower than the known data. Instead of the generally accepted values sr (where s is nonlinear degree of substitution and r is number of rounds), the computational experiments demonstrated the value s(r-1)+1 in all the considered cases.

These results allow to clarify the complexity of constructing the best known distinguisher - the zero-sum distinguisher - for a multi-round transformations. Thus, instead of the known complexity values of 285 and 2130 for 11 and 12 rounds of transformations, according to our data, the complexity for 11 rounds is 235 and for 12 rounds is 270.

Additional Files

Published

2025-05-30

Issue

Section

Cryptography and Cybersecurity