Mathematical vulnerabilities of Advanced Encryption Standard in counter mode (AES-CTR) stem from misuse or reuse of the nonce. Assuming proper use of the nonce, unraveling the encryption becomes increasingly complex. SPLICE team members show full key recovery for a software implementation of AES-CTR using a template attack. They also refine the template attack’s points of interest by using first-order analyses to determine where key bytes are located, ultimately reducing the computational workload.

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Tienteu, Marcial, Edmund Smith, Edgar Mateos Santillan, Kevin Kornegay, Paige Harvey, Otily Toutsop, Tsion Yimer, Vinton Morris, and Ketchiozo Wandji. “Template Attack Against AES in Counter Mode With Unknown Initial Counter.” In 2023 IEEE 13th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC), 0525–33. Las Vegas, NV, USA: IEEE, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1109/CCWC57344.2023.10099238.