Preface
The main purpose of this book is to offer a fundamental understanding of security and its implementation of block ciphers. Nowadays, research fields in computer science and engineering have a vast scope and cryptology deals with various topics in information security. In order to understand the cutting-edge technology and science that underlies cryptology, block cipher is one of the best-suited targets both from theoretical and practical points of view. In order to offer the learning materials to fill the gap between theory and practice of the security of block ciphers, our focus goes to cryptanalysis, side-channel analysis, and fault analysis against block ciphers rather than covering all the security issues of block ciphers. AES is currently one of the most researched block ciphers in academia and widely used both in government and in commerce. Considering this fact, the explanations in this book are mainly oriented to the security of AES. In addition, AES is one of the best choices to build up all the discussions from algorithm design to hardware implementation, which is very helpful for readers to follow and to understand the basic ideas that can apply to other block ciphers.
Book Organization
This book is intended as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students to have a big picture understanding of block ciphers from algorithm to implementations. The contents also include essential knowledge that is useful for cryptographers who are not familiar with hardware, and hardware researchers who are not familiar with the security of block ciphers. This book consists of seven chapters, and each chapter is written by the main authors listed in Table 1.
Table 1 Main Author
| Chapter Number: Chapter Title | KS | YS | YL |
| 1: Introduction to Block Ciphers | X | X | |
| 2: Introduction to Digital Circuits | X | ||
| 3: Hardware Implementations for Block Ciphers | X | ||
| 4: Cryptanalysis on Block Ciphers | X | ||
| 5: Side-Channel Analysis and Fault Analysis on Block Ciphers | X | X | |
| 6: Advanced Fault Analysis with Techniques from Cryptanalysis | X | ||
| 7: Countermeasures against Side-Channel Analysis and Fault Analysis | X | X |
For the purpose of helping readers to understand the chapters, we have prepared several exercises. Some exercises are easy, and suitable for testing the comprehension of each individual learner. Some exercises are moderately difficult, and therefore readers might consider working in a small group as they would on a mini project.
There are several (sub)sections whose titles have a mark “†” at the end. They require knowledge about advanced-level techniques to understand and implement the analysis methods. Readers who find it difficult to follow them are recommended to skip them at the first reading, and focus on understanding the essential concepts of cryptanalysis and side-channel analysis from other sections.
We hope that the readers will enjoy the world of block cipher security and open new horizons through this fantastic field of study.
Kazuo Sakiyama
Yu Sasaki
Yang Li