MILP-Aided Cryptanalysis of the FUTURE Block Cipher

Abstract

FUTURE is a recently proposed, lightweight block cipher. It has an AES-like, SP-based, 10-round encryption function, where, unlike most other lightweight constructions, the diffusion layer is based on an MDS matrix. Despite its relative complexity, it has a remarkable hardware performance due to careful design decisions. In this paper, we conducted a MILP-based analysis of the cipher, where we incorporated exact probabilities rather than just the number of active S-boxes into the model. Through the MILP analysis, we were able to find differential and linear distinguishers for up to 5 rounds of FUTURE, extending the known distinguishers of the cipher by one round. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.