Spook: Sponge-Based Leakage-Resistant Authenticated Encryption with a Masked Tweakable Block Cipher

Abstract

This document defines Spook: a sponge-based authenticated encryption with associated data algorithm. It is primarily designed to provide security against side-channel attacks at a low energy cost. For this purpose, Spook is mixing a leakage-resilient mode of operation with bitslice ciphers enabling efficient and low latency implementations. The leakage-resilient mode of operation leverages a re-keying function to prevent differential side-channel analysis, a duplex sponge construction to efficiently process the data, and a tag verification based on a Tweakable Block Cipher (TBC) providing strong data integrity guarantees in the presence of leakages. The underlying bitslice ciphers are optimized for the masking countermeasures against side-channel attacks. Spook is an efficient single-pass algorithm. It provides state-of-the-art black box security with several prominent features: (i) nonce misuse-resilience, (ii) beyond-birthday security with respect to the TBC size, and (iii) multi-user security at minimum cost with a public tweak.

Publication
In ToSC Special Issue on Designs for the NIST Lightweight Standardisation Process