Computer Engineering Commons^™

Closing The Gap: Leveraging Aes-Ni To Balance Adversarial Advantage And Honest User Performance In Argon2i, Nicholas Harrell, Nathaniel Krakauer

CERIAS Technical Reports

The challenge of providing data privacy and integrity while maintaining efficient performance for honest users is a persistent concern in cryptography. Attackers exploit advances in parallel hardware and custom circuit hardware to gain an advantage over regular users. One such method is the use of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to optimize key derivation function (KDF) algorithms, giving adversaries a significant advantage in password guessing and recovery attacks. Other examples include using graphical processing units (GPUs) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We propose a focused approach to close the gap between adversarial advantage and honest user performance by leveraging the …