Abstract. At DRM 2002, Chow et al. [4] presented a method for implementing the DES block cipher such that it becomes hard to extract the embedded secret key in a white-box attack context. In such a context, an attacker has full access to the implementation and its execution environment. In order to provide an extra level of security, an implementation shielded with external encodings was introduced by Chow et al. and improved by Link and Neumann [10]. In this paper, we present an algorithm to extract the secret key from such white-box DES implementations. The cryptanalysis is a differential attack on obfuscated rounds, and works regardless of the shielding external encodings that are applied. The cryptanalysis has a average time complexity of 2 14 and a negligible space complexity.

In response to various cryptanalysis results on white-box cryptography, Bringer et al. presented a novel white-box strategy. They propose to extend the round computations of a block cipher with a set of random equations and perturbations, and complicate the analysis by implementing each such round as one system that is obfuscated with annihilating linear input and output encodings. The improved version presented by Bringer et al. implements the AEw/oS, which is an AES version with key-dependent S-boxes (the S-boxes are in fact the secret key). In this paper we present an algebraic analysis to recover equivalent keys from the implementation. We show how the perturbations and system of random equations can be distinguished from the implementation, and how the linear input and output encodings can be eliminated. The result is that we have decomposed the white-box implementation into a much more simple, functionally equivalent implementation and retrieved a set of keys that are equivalent to the original key. Our cryptanalysis has a worst time complexity of 2 17 and a negligible space complexity.

Abstract. While code obfuscation attempts to hide certain characteristics of a program independently of an application, white-box cryptography (WBC) specifically focuses on software implementations of cryptographic primitives in an application. The aim of WBC is to resist attacks from an adversary having access to some 'executable' code with an embedded secret key. WBC, if possible, would have several applications. However, unlike obfuscation, it lacks a theoretical foundation. We present a first step towards a theoretical model of WBC via white-box security notions. We also present some positive and negative results on WBC and obfuscation. In particular, we show that for most interesting programs (such as an encryption algorithm), there are security notions that cannot be satisfied when the adversary has white-box access, while they are satisfied when it has black-box access. On the positive side, we show that there exists an obfuscator for a symmetric encryption scheme in the context of a useful security-notion (such as IND-CPA).

A lot of progress has been made to secure network communication, e.g., through the use of cryptographic algorithms. However, this offers only a partial solution as long as the communicating end points still suffer from security problems. A number of applications require remote verification of software executing on an untrusted platform. Trusted computing solutions propose to solve this problem through software and hardware changes, typically a secure operating system and the addition of a secure coprocessor respectively. On the other hand, timed execution of code checksum calculations aims for a solution on legacy platforms, but can not provide strong security assurance. We present a mixed solution by using the trusted computing hardware, namely the time stamping functionality of the trusted platform module, in combination with a timing based remote code integrity verification mechanism. In this way, we do not require a secure operating system, but at the same time the overall security of the timed execution scheme can be improved.

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