A possible intrinsic weakness of AES and other cryptosystems

TL;DR

This paper explores a potential intrinsic weakness in AES and similar cryptosystems by constructing an embedding that may reduce their non-linearity, highlighting possible vulnerabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a method to embed AES-like ciphers into a structure that could compromise their non-linearity, revealing a new potential weakness.

Findings

Constructed cipher embedding that may reduce non-linearity

Examples demonstrating potential vulnerabilities

Discussion of limitations of the approach

Abstract

It has been suggested that the algebraic structure of AES (and other similar block ciphers) could lead to a weakness exploitable in new attacks. In this paper, we use the algebraic structure of AES-like ciphers to construct a cipher embedding where the ciphers may lose their non-linearity. We show some examples and we discuss the limitations of our approach.