Quantum Differential Cryptanalysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum differential cryptanalysis method that leverages quantum algorithms to achieve a quadratic speedup over classical techniques, potentially compromising classical ciphers more efficiently.

Contribution

It presents the first quantum version of differential cryptanalysis, utilizing quantum minimum/maximum-finding and counting algorithms to enhance cryptanalytic speed.

Findings

Quantum differential cryptanalysis offers quadratic speedup.

Any cipher vulnerable to classical differential cryptanalysis can be more quickly attacked.

The paper provides a quantum circuit implementation for the proposed method.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a quantum version of the differential cryptanalysis which offers a quadratic speedup over the existing classical one and show the quantum circuit implementing it. The quantum differential cryptanalysis is based on the quantum minimum/maximum-finding algorithm, where the values to be compared and filtered are obtained by calling the quantum counting algorithm. Any cipher which is vulnerable to the classical differential cryptanalysis based on counting procedures can be cracked more quickly under this quantum differential attack.