Paper 2026/1633 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2026/1633 ↗

Rotational-Quasidifferential Framework - A Geometric Approach to Rotational-XOR Cryptanalysis

Abstract

Rotational-XOR (RX) cryptanalysis extends rotational cryptanalysis by combining rotational relations with XOR translations, enabling the analysis of symmetric-key primitives even in the presence of symmetry-breaking constants. Existing analyses of RX characteristics, however, typically rely on independence assumptions when estimating characteristic probabilities, which may lead to inaccurate probability evaluations and even incompatible characteristics. In this paper, we introduce the first application of the geometric approach to RX cryptanalysis. Inspired by the quasidifferential framework of Beyne and Rijmen, we define rotational-quasidifferential trails and derive exact expressions for fixed-key RX characteristic probabilities without relying on round-independence assumptions. We also derive explicit rotational-quasidifferential transition matrices for bitwise AND and modular addition. By incorporating the key schedule into the state space, we further obtain an exact expression for the Expected Rotational-XOR Probability (ERXP), the RX analogue of the Expected Differential Probability (EDP). We apply the framework to the ARX cipher SPECK, the ARX permutation Alzette, and the AND-RX ciphers SIMON and SIMECK. For SPECK32/64, we reproduce known incompatibility results and repair an incompatible 12-round characteristic. For Alzette, we show that signed nonzero-mask contributions explain the discrepancy between independent-ADD estimates and experimentally observed full-data-path probabilities. For SIMECK, we experimentally verify a fixed-key probability distribution, explain incompatible characteristics, and correct the weak-key class estimates of rotational-XOR differential rectangle attacks. These results extend the geometric approach to both ARX and AND-RX designs and demonstrate its usefulness for exact characteristic-level analysis.