Yoyo Tricks with AES

In this paper we present new fundamental properties of SPNs. These properties turn out to be particularly useful in the adaptive chosen ciphertext/plaintext setting and we show this by introducing for the first time key-independent yoyo-distinguishers for 3to 5-rounds of AES. All of our distinguishers beat previous records and require respectively 3, 4 and 2 data and essentially zero computation except for observing differences. In addition, we present the first key-independent distinguisher for 6-rounds AES based on yoyos that preserve impossible zero differences in plaintexts and ciphertexts. This distinguisher requires an impractical amount of 2 plaintext/ciphertext pairs and essentially no computation apart from observing the corresponding differences. We then present a very favorable key-recovery attack on 5-rounds of AES that requires only 2 data complexity and 2 computational complexity, which as far as we know is also a new record. All our attacks are in the adaptively chosen plaintext/ciphertext scenario. Our distinguishers for AES stem from new and fundamental properties of generic SPNs, including generic SAS and SASAS, that can be used to preserve zero differences under the action of exchanging values between existing ciphertext and plaintext pairs. We provide a simple distinguisher for 2 generic SP-rounds that requires only 4 adaptively chosen ciphertexts and no computation on the adversaries side. We then describe a generic and deterministic yoyo-game for 3 generic SP-rounds which preserves zero differences in the middle but which we are not capable of exploiting in the generic setting.