Tortoise: An Authenticated Encryption Scheme

TL;DR

Tortoise is a new nonce-based authenticated encryption scheme that provides flexible modes including nonce-respecting and nonce-misuse-resistant, using a generic tweakable cipher framework for secure data authentication.

Contribution

It introduces a novel plug-and-play framework for converting block ciphers into authenticated encryption schemes with support for multiple operational modes.

Findings

Demonstrates a generalizable framework for authenticated encryption

Supports nonce-respecting and nonce-misuse-resistant modes

Provides source code for implementation

Abstract

Given the open nature of the Internet, there is a need for authentication schemes to address inherent trust issues. We present Tortoise, an experimental nonce-based authenticated encryption scheme modeled on the Synthetic Counter-in-Tweak. This paper demonstrates a generalizable plug-and-play framework for converting block cipher into Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data. As part of this work, we utilized an XOR procedure for constructing a generic tweakable cipher. Finally, we support two modes: nonce-respecting and nonce-misuse-resistant. Source code available at https://github.com/kenluck2001/cipherResearch/tree/main/src/tortoise.