Key-Committing Security Analysis of ACORN and Deoxys

Authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) provides confidentiality and integrity but need not commit a ciphertext to its key. We study this additional property for ACORN-128 v3 and Deoxys-I/II. Our baseline constructions use two distinct known keys and a common nonce while allowing different associated data (AD), and produce identical complete ciphertext–tag pairs. They directly witness failures of the commitment (CMT) notions for the key (CMT-1), decryption context (CMT-3), and complete encryption input (CMT-4), as well as the full-robustness notion for AEAD (AEAD-FROB) used here. For ACORN, we prove full rank of a 293-dimensional binary control matrix, guaranteeing state collisions for arbitrary initialized states; a byte-oriented implementation uses 37-byte controllable AD suffixes and can preserve a common AD prefix. For Deoxys, we instantiate the established AD-preimage technique, requiring two forward and one inverse tweakable-block-cipher calls for the empty-message Deoxys-I construction, and one forward and two inverse calls for Deoxys-II. We also derive nonempty-message constructions and verify two-key instances with both nonce and AD common by solving a binary selection system. Fixed-version reference implementations verify all reported collisions and both decryptions. These results concern commitment under the stated input control and do not establish attacks on conventional unknown-key AEAD security or on specific deployed protocols.

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Publication Details

Journal
Symmetry
Published
2026-10-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym18111802
Primary Topic
Cryptographic Implementations and Security
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Key-Committing Security Analysis of ACORN and Deoxys

Huiyan Chen, Huiqin Xie, Caibing WANG, Ying Chen
1 links
Symmetry
Cryptographic Implementations and Security
article

Key-Committing Security Analysis of ACORN and Deoxys

Huiyan Chen, Huiqin Xie, Caibing WANG, Ying Chen
article en

Abstract

Authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) provides confidentiality and integrity but need not commit a ciphertext to its key. We study this additional property for ACORN-128 v3 and Deoxys-I/II. Our baseline constructions use two distinct known keys and a common nonce while allowing different associated data (AD), and produce identical complete ciphertext–tag pairs. They directly witness failures of the commitment (CMT) notions for the key (CMT-1), decryption context (CMT-3), and complete encryption input (CMT-4), as well as the full-robustness notion for AEAD (AEAD-FROB) used here. For ACORN, we prove full rank of a 293-dimensional binary control matrix, guaranteeing state collisions for arbitrary initialized states; a byte-oriented implementation uses 37-byte controllable AD suffixes and can preserve a common AD prefix. For Deoxys, we instantiate the established AD-preimage technique, requiring two forward and one inverse tweakable-block-cipher calls for the empty-message Deoxys-I construction, and one forward and two inverse calls for Deoxys-II. We also derive nonempty-message constructions and verify two-key instances with both nonce and AD common by solving a binary selection system. Fixed-version reference implementations verify all reported collisions and both decryptions. These results concern commitment under the stated input control and do not establish attacks on conventional unknown-key AEAD security or on specific deployed protocols.

SymmetryVol. 18(11)
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute (CN)
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Cryptographic Implementations and Security
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