Applying Byte-Shuffling to CLEFIA-Type Structure

Generalized Feistel Network (GFN) is widely used in block ciphers. CLEFIA is one of the GFN type-2 block ciphers. CLEFIA employs Diffusion Switching Mechanism (DSM) in its diffusion layer. DSM improves CLEFIA's security by increasing its number of active S-boxes, which is an indicator of security against differential and linear cryptanalyses. However, two matrices in DSM increase implementational cost. In this paper, we pursue the research question whether it is possible to achieve the same security as original CLEFIA with only one matrix without overhead in hardware. Our idea to answer the research question is applying byte-shuffling technique to CLEFIA. Byte-shuffling is an operation to shuffle 8-bit bytes. On the other hand, traditional GFN ciphers rotate 32-bit or larger words in their permutation layer. Since implementation of byte-shuffling is considered as cost-free in hardware, it adds no overhead in comparison with word rotation. Byte-shuffling has numerous shuffle patterns whereas word rotation has a few patterns. In addition, security property varies among the shuffle patterns. So, we have to find the optimal shuffle pattern(s) on the way to pursue the research question. Although one way to find the optimal shuffle pattern is evaluating all possible shuffle patterns, it is impractical to evaluate them since the evaluation needs much time and computation. We utilize even-odd byte-shuffling technique to narrow the number of shuffle patterns to be searched. Among numerous shuffle patterns, we found 168 shuffle patterns as the optimal shuffle patterns. They achieved full diffusion in 5 rounds. This is the same security as original CLEFIA. They achieved enough security against differential and linear cryptanalyses at 13th and 14th round, respectively, by active S-box evaluations. It is just one and two rounds longer than original CLEFIA. However, it is three and two rounds earlier than CLEFIA without DSM.