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Earlier today, I made a Twitter shitpost that confused a lot of folks from the UK.
https://twitter.com/SoatokDhole/status/1403437113962545152
Now, anyone can be forgiven for not knowing what AES-GCM-SIV is, or for being confused by the grammar of the meme. But the source of confusion was the word “nonce”.
Let’s talk about what the word “nonce” means in cryptography, what it means in the UK, and why the UK is completely wrong.
(Art by Khia.)
What “Nonce” Means to Cryptographers
The word nonce means number to be used only once.
In some texts, you might see it written as 
If a cryptographic protocol uses a nonce, typically its security depends on the number never being reused with a given key. (It’s fine if two different people use the same nonce, as long as their keys are different.)
Simple, concise, reasonable. I can explain this definition to a fifth grader and they’ll understand it immediately.
I don’t even have to dive into the origins or etymology of the term for it to be understandable. No problems here.
What “Nonce” Means to UK Residents
To a British person, the word nonce means a child molester.
Okay, that escalated quickly. How the hell did they arrive at that definition?
Well, it turns out, the UK slang usage of the word “nonce” is derived from “nance”–derived from “nancy” or “nancyboy”, which is a homophobic and/or transphobic slur.
If you’re not familiar with the discourse of LGBTQIA+ rights, one of the common refrains of homophobes and right-wing extremists (two groups whose Venn diagram is nearly a circle) is that queer people are going to target children.
When I was in school, the way they phrased it was, “Because they cannot reproduce, they must recruit.“
So it doesn’t exactly require the world’s greatest cryptanalysts to figure out how a word associated with gender noncomformity and/or homosexuality would evolve into a synonym for sexual offender in the UK’s vernacular.
Thus, the British usage of the term “nonce” is propping up a lot of hateful and ignorant ideology. Whenever you use the word “nonce” to describe sexual abusers, you’re being incidentally queerphobic. Maybe consider not doing that?
If you really want to insult someone, or imply they’re a threat to the safety of children, just call them a a friend of Jimmy Savile. Or if you want to go low-brow, just call them a paedo. Everyone understands “paedo”!
Why Not Just “Initialization Vector”?
A lot of people in cryptography who are aware of the British slang (but probably not its origins, until now) try to side-step their use of the word “nonce” by calling it an “initialization vector” instead; often abbreviated as IV.
This isn’t helpful for two reasons other than etymology and connotation.
- Initialization vector means different things to cryptographic constructions (i.e. block cipher modes) than to cryptographic primitives (i.e. hash function internals).
- When talking about constructions, the security requirements of an initialization vector are subtly different than a nonce.
- Nonces: Never repeat for a given key. (CTR, GCM, etc.)
- IVs: Never repeat and be unpredictable. (CBC, etc.)
A lot of cryptography libraries arbitrarily choose one term for their APIs, regardless of the mode used. For brevity, iv is tantalizingly convenient (but so is n), so you often see IV shoehorned everywhere.
For hash functions, the initialization vector is a constant that never changes. For block ciphers, it should always change (and, contrasted with a counter nonce, be an unpredictably random value). This makes the expected security properties of the term needlessly ambiguous.
A nonce is always intended to used once, and never reused.
There are already more than enough overloaded terms in cryptography (n.b. Galois/Counter Mode or Google Cloud Messaging? NaCl or Native Client?).
What About ECDSA Nonces?
ECDSA doesn’t really have a nonce, it has a one-time secret that MUST NOT ever repeat. This variable is called 
- It has to be a secret (where nonces and IVs can be public).
- You can’t even have a biased distribution of bits in
Calling the ECDSA k-value a “nonce” is a bad habit that many of us are guilty of, but it’s truly not a nonce.
Which Usage Has Deeper Historical Roots?
The UK slang is much younger than the cryptography (and broader) use of the word “nonce”, which originates from Middle English and means “occurring, used, or made only once or for a special occasion”.
If you’re someone who values that sort of thing, the UK slang still loses out to how cryptographers use the word.
Which Usage Is More Popular?
Almost nobody outside the UK uses the word “nonce” in a bad way. The overwhelming majority of the English-speaking world doesn’t agree with the UK. See also: Nonce word.
This term has been used in cryptography literature since at least 1978.
https://twitter.com/ciphergoth/status/1526668466614312966
In Closing
When a cryptographer talks about a nonce, the meaning of the term is clear, obvious, and NOT thinly-veiled queerphobia that crept into the local slang. It’s also more in line with how the word is used in non-cryptographic contexts outside the UK.
The UK usage of the word “nonce” is worse than the cryptographer usage, and therefore they should cede the word’s meaning to cryptographers.
(Y’know, unless you value queerphobic rhetoric that highly.)
(Art by Khia.)
Why Does This Even Matter?
Most of the time, when I’m discussing nonces in a cryptography or security context, it’s incredibly clear what I mean by the word. But I frequently have to explain to folks that hail from the UK that, no, I’m not talking about sexual offenders.
https://soatok.blog/2021/06/11/on-the-word-nonce-in-cryptography-and-the-uk/
#cryptography #etymology #nonce #Society #UK
There seems to be a lot of interest among software developers in the various cryptographic building blocks (block ciphers, hash functions, etc.), and more specifically how they stack up against each other.Today, we’re going to look at how some symmetric encryption methods stack up against each other.
If you’re just looking for a short list of cryptographic “right answers”, your cheat sheet can be found on Latacora’s blog.
Comparisons
- AES-GCM vs. ChaCha20-Poly1305
- AES-GCM vs. XChaCha20-Poly1305
- AES-GCM vs. AES-CCM
- AES-GCM vs. AES-GCM-SIV
- AES-GCM vs. AES-SIV
- AES-GCM-SIV vs. AES-SIV
- AES-GCM vs. AES-CBC
- AES-GCM vs. AES-CTR
- AES-CBC vs. AES-CTR
- AES-CBC vs. AES-ECB
- AES vs. Blowfish
- ChaCha vs. Salsa20
- ChaCha vs. RC4
- Cipher Cascades
AES-GCM vs. ChaCha20-Poly1305
- If you have hardware acceleration (e.g. AES-NI), then AES-GCM provides better performance. If you do not, AES-GCM is either slower than ChaCha20-Poly1305, or it leaks your encryption keys in cache timing.
- Neither algorithm is message committing, which makes both unsuitable for algorithms like OPAQUE (explanation).
- AES-GCM can target multiple security levels (128-bit, 192-bit, 256-bit), whereas ChaCha20-Poly1305 is only defined at the 256-bit security level.
- Nonce size:
- AES-GCM: Varies, but standard is 96 bits (12 bytes). If you supply a longer nonce, this gets hashed down to 16 bytes.
- ChaCha20-Poly1305: The standardized version uses 96-bit nonces (12 bytes), but the original used 64-bit nonces (8 bytes).
- Wearout of a single (key, nonce) pair:
- AES-GCM: Messages must be less than 2^32 – 2 blocks (a.k.a. 2^36 – 32 bytes, a.k.a. 2^39 – 256 bits). This also makes the security analysis of AES-GCM with long nonces complicated, since the hashed nonce doesn’t start with the lower 4 bytes set to 00 00 00 02.
- ChaCha20-Poly1305: ChaCha has an internal counter (32 bits in the standardized IETF variant, 64 bits in the original design).
- Neither algorithm is nonce misuse resistant.
Conclusion: Both are good options. AES-GCM can be faster with hardware support, but pure-software implementations of ChaCha20-Poly1305 are almost always fast and constant-time.
AES-GCM vs. XChaCha20-Poly1305
- XChaCha20 accepts 192-bit nonces (24 bytes). The first 16 of the nonce are used with the ChaCha key to derive a subkey, and then the rest of this algorithm is the same as ChaCha20-Poly1305.
- To compare AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 for encryption, see above.
- The longer nonce makes XChaCha20-Poly1305 better suited for long-lived keys (i.e. application-layer cryptography) than AES-GCM.
Conclusion: If you’re using the same key for a large number of messages, XChaCha20-Poly1305 has a wider safety margin than AES-GCM. Therefore, XChaCha20-Poly1305 should be preferred in those cases.
AES-GCM vs. AES-CCM
AES-GCM is AES in Galois/Counter Mode, AES-CCM is AES in Counter with CBC-MAC mode.Although I previously stated that AES-GCM is possibly my least favorite AEAD, AES-CCM is decidedly worse: AES-GCM is Encrypt-then-MAC, while AES-CCM is MAC-then-encrypt.
Sure, CCM mode has a security proof that arguably justifies violating the cryptographic doom principle, but I contend the only time it’s worthwhile to do that is when you’re building a nonce-misuse resistant mode (i.e. AES-GCM-SIV).
A lot of cryptography libraries simply don’t even implement AES-CCM; or if they do, it’s disabled by default (i.e. OpenSSL). A notable exception is the Stanford Javascript Cryptography Library, which defaults to AES-CCM + PBKDF2 for encryption.
Conclusion: Just use AES-GCM.
AES-GCM vs. AES-GCM-SIV
AES-GCM-SIV encryption runs at 70% the speed of AES-GCM, but decryption is just as fast. What does this 30% encryption slowdown buy? Nonce misuse resistance.
Nonce misuse resistance is really cool. (Art by Swizz)
The algorithms are significantly different:
- AES-GCM is basically AES-CTR, then GMAC (parameterized by the key and nonce) is applied over the AAD and ciphertext. (Encrypt then MAC)
- AES-GCM-SIV derives two distinct keys from the nonce and key, then uses POLYVAL (which is related to GHASH) over the AAD and message with the first key to generate the tag. Then the tag used to derive a series of AES inputs that, when encrypted with the second key, are XORed with the blocks of the message (basically counter mode). (MAC then Encrypt)
AES-GCM is a simpler algorithm to analyze. AES-GCM-SIV provides a greater safety margin. However, like AES-GCM, AES-GCM-SIV is also vulnerable to the Invisible Salamanders attack.
So really, use which ever you want.
Better security comes from AES-GCM-SIV, better encryption performance comes from AES-GCM. What are your priorities?
https://twitter.com/colmmacc/status/986286693572493312
Conclusion: AES-GCM-SIV is better, but both are fine.
AES-GCM vs. AES-SIV
At the risk of being overly reductionist, AES-SIV is basically a nonce misuse resistant variant of AES-CCM:
- Where AES-CCM uses CBC-MAC, AES-SIV uses CMAC, which is based on CBC-MAC but with a doubling step (left shift then XOR with the round constant).
- AES-SIV is MAC then encrypt (so is AES-CCM).
- AES-SIV uses AES-CTR (so does AES-CCM).
If you need nonce misuse resistance, AES-SIV is a tempting choice, but you’re going to get better performance out of AES-GCM.
AES-GCM also has the added advantage of not relying on CBC-MAC.
Conclusion: Prefer AES-GCM in most threat models, AES-SIV in narrower threat models where nonce misuse is the foremost security risk.
AES-GCM-SIV vs. AES-SIV
If you read the previous two sections, the conclusion here should be obvious.
- AES-GCM-SIV is slightly better than AES-GCM.
- AES-GCM is better than AES-SIV.
Conclusion: Use AES-GCM-SIV.
AES-GCM vs. AES-CBC
Just use AES-GCM. No contest.AES-GCM is an authenticated encryption mode. It doesn’t just provide confidentiality by encrypting your message, it also provides integrity (which guarantees that nobody tampered with the encrypted message over the wire).
If you select AES-CBC instead of AES-GCM, you’re opening your systems to a type of attack called a padding oracle (which lets attackers decrypt messages without the key, by replaying altered ciphertexts and studying the behavior of your application).
If you must use AES-CBC, then you must also MAC your ciphertext (and the initialization vector–IV for short). You should also devise some sort of key-separation mechanism so you’re not using the same key for two different algorithms. Even something like this is fine:
- encKey := HmacSha256(“encryption-cbc-hmac”, key)
- macKey := HmacSha256(“authentication-cbc-hmac”, key)
- iv := RandomBytes(16)
- ciphertext := AesCbc(plaintext, iv, encKey)
- tag := HmacSha256(iv + ciphertext, macKey)
For decryption you need a secure compare function. If one is not available to you, or you cannot guarantee it will run in constant time, a second HMAC call with a random per-comparison key will suffice.
There is no possible world in which case unauthenticated AES-CBC is a safer choice than AES-GCM.
AES-CBC + HMAC-SHA256 (encrypt then MAC) is message-committing and therefore can be safely used with algorithms like OPAQUE.
The Signal Protocol uses AES-CBC + HMAC-SHA2 for message encryption.
AES-GCM vs. AES-CTR
Just use AES-GCM. No contest.Unlike AES-GCM, AES-CTR doesn’t provide any message integrity guarantees. However, strictly speaking, AES-GCM uses AES-CTR under the hood.
If you must use AES-CTR, the same rules apply as for AES-CBC:
- encKey := HmacSha256(“encryption-ctr-hmac”, key)
- macKey := HmacSha256(“authentication-ctr-hmac”, key)
- nonce := RandomBytes(16)
- ciphertext := AesCtr(plaintext, nonce, encKey)
- tag := HmacSha256(nonce + ciphertext, macKey)
For decryption you need a secure compare function.
AES-CTR + HMAC-SHA256 (encrypt then MAC) is message-committing and therefore can be safely used with algorithms like OPAQUE.
AES-CBC vs. AES-CTR
If you find yourself trying to decide between CBC mode and CTR mode, you should probably save yourself the headache and just use GCM instead.That being said:
AES-CTR fails harder than AES-CBC when you reuse an IV/nonce.
AES-CBC requires a padding scheme (e.g. PKCS #7 padding) which adds unnecessary algorithmic complexity.
If you have to decide between the two, and you have a robust extended-nonce key-splitting scheme in place, opt for AES-CTR. But really, unless you’re a cryptography engineer well-versed in the nuances and failure modes of these algorithms, you shouldn’t even be making this choice.
AES-CBC vs. AES-ECB
Never use ECB mode. ECB mode lacks semantic security.Block cipher modes that support initialization vectors were invented to compensate for this shortcoming.
Conclusion: If you’re trying to decide between these two, you’ve already lost. Rethink your strategy.
AES vs. Blowfish
A lot of OpenVPN configurations in the wild default to Blowfish for encryption. To the authors of these configuration files, I have but one question:
Why?! (Art by Khia)
Sure, you might think, “But Blowfish supports up to 448-bit keys and is therefore more secure than even 256-bit AES.”
Cryptographic security isn’t a dick-measuring contest. Key size isn’t everything. More key isn’t more security.
AES is a block cipher with a 128-bit block size. Blowfish is a block cipher with a 64-bit block size. This means that Blowfish in CBC mode is vulnerable to birthday attacks in a practical setting.
AES has received several orders of magnitude more scrutiny from cryptography experts than Blowfish has.
Conclusion: Use AES instead of Blowfish.
ChaCha vs. Salsa20
Salsa20 is an eSTREAM finalist stream cipher. After years of cryptanalysis, reduced round variants of Salsa20 (specifically, Salsa20/7 with a 128-bit key) were found to be breakable. In response to this, a variant called ChaCha was published that increased the per-round diffusion.That is to say: ChaCha is generally more secure than Salsa20 with similar or slightly better performance. If you have to choose between the two, go for ChaCha.
Conclusion: Your choice (both are good but ChaCha is slightly better).
ChaCha vs. RC4
Don’t use RC4 for anything! What are you doing?
My reaction when I read that the CIA was using a modified RC4 in their Assassin malware instead of a secure stream cipher, per the Vault7 leaks. (Art by Khia)
RC4 was a stream cipher–allegedly designed by Ron Rivest and leaked onto a mailing list–that has been thoroughly demolished by cryptanalysis. RC4 is not secure and should never be relied on for security.
Conclusion: Use ChaCha. Never use RC4.
Cipher Cascades
A cipher cascade is when you encrypt a message with one cipher, and then encrypt the ciphertext with another cipher, sometimes multiple times. One example: TripleSec by Keybase, which combines AES and Salsa20 (and, formerly, Twofish–an AES finalist).Cipher cascades don’t meaningfully improve security in realistic threat models. However, if your threat model includes “AES is broken or backdoored by the NSA”, a cipher cascade using AES is safer than just selecting a nonstandard cipher instead of AES. However, they’re necessarily slower than just using AES would be.
If you’re worried about this, your time is better spent worrying about key management, side-channel attacks, and software supply chain attacks.
Conclusion: Avoid cipher cascades, but they’re better than recklessly paranoid alternatives.
Symmetric Encryption Rankings
So with all of the above information, can we rank these algorithms into tiers?
Art by Riley
Sort of! Although it’s based on the above analyses, ranking is inherently subjective. So what follows is entirely the author’s opinion of their relative goodness/badness.
S XChaCha20-Poly1305, AES-GCM-SIV A AES-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305 B AES-SIV C AES-CTR + HMAC-SHA2, AES-CBC + HMAC-SHA2 D AES-CCM F Any: AES-ECB, RC4, Blowfish
Unauthenticated: AES-CBC, AES-CTR, Salsa20, ChaChaSoatok’s ranking of symmetric encryption methods
https://soatok.blog/2020/07/12/comparison-of-symmetric-encryption-methods/#AEAD #AES #AESGCM #AESGCMSIV #ChaCha20Poly1305 #ciphers #comparison #cryptography #encryption #NMRAEAD #ranking #SecurityGuidance #streamCiphers #symmetricCryptography #symmetricEncryption #XChaCha20Poly1305
