Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Moses Liskov, Ronald L. Rivest, David Wagner. "Tweakable Block Ciphers". Journal of Cryptology, 24(3), July 2011.

Abstract
We propose a new cryptographic primitive, the "tweakable block cipher." Such a cipher has not only the usual inputs - message and cryptographic key - but also a third input, the "tweak." The tweak serves much the same purpose that an initialization vector does for CBC mode or that a nonce does for OCB mode. Our proposal thus brings this feature down to the primitive block-cipher level, instead of incorporating it only at the higher modes-of-operation levels. We suggest that (1) tweakable block ciphers are easy to design, (2) the extra cost of making a block cipher "tweakable" is small, and (3) it is easier to design and prove modes of operation based on tweakable block ciphers.

Electronic downloads

• http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1967414

• HTML

  Moses Liskov, Ronald L. Rivest, David Wagner. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/849.html"
  >Tweakable Block Ciphers</a>, <i>Journal of
  Cryptology</i>, 24(3), July 2011.

• Plain text

  Moses Liskov, Ronald L. Rivest, David Wagner.
  "Tweakable Block Ciphers". <i>Journal of
  Cryptology</i>, 24(3), July 2011.

• BibTeX

  @article{LiskovRivestWagner11_TweakableBlockCiphers,
      author = {Moses Liskov and Ronald L. Rivest and David Wagner},
      title = {Tweakable Block Ciphers},
      journal = {Journal of Cryptology},
      volume = {24},
      number = {3},
      month = {July},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {We propose a new cryptographic primitive, the
                "tweakable block cipher." Such a cipher has not
                only the usual inputs - message and cryptographic
                key - but also a third input, the "tweak." The
                tweak serves much the same purpose that an
                initialization vector does for CBC mode or that a
                nonce does for OCB mode. Our proposal thus brings
                this feature down to the primitive block-cipher
                level, instead of incorporating it only at the
                higher modes-of-operation levels. We suggest that
                (1) tweakable block ciphers are easy to design,
                (2) the extra cost of making a block cipher
                "tweakable" is small, and (3) it is easier to
                design and prove modes of operation based on
                tweakable block ciphers.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/849.html}
  }
  

Posted by Mary Stewart on 4 Apr 2012.
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