Abstract
Near-MDS matrices provide better trade-offs between security and efficiency compared to constructions based on MDS matrices, which are favored for hardware-oriented designs. We present new designs of lightweight linear diffusion layers by constructing lightweight near-MDS matrices. Firstly generic n x n near-MDS circulant matrices are found for 5 <= n <= 9. Secondly , the implementation cost of instantiations of the generic near-MDS matrices is examined. Surprisingly, for n = 7, 8, it turns out that some proposed near-MDS circulant matrices of order n have the lowest XOR count among all near-MDS matrices of the same order. Further, for n = 5, 6, we present near-MDS matrices of order n having the lowest XOR count as well. The proposed matrices, together with previous construction of order less than five, lead to solutions of n x n near-MDS matrices with the lowest XOR count over finite fields F-2(m) for 2 <= n <= 8 and 4 <= m <= 2048. Moreover, we present some involutory near-MDS matrices of order 8 constructed from Hadamard matrices. Lastly, the security of the proposed linear layers is studied by calculating lower bounds on the number of active S-boxes. It is shown that our linear layers with a well-chosen nonlinear layer can provide sufficient security against differential and linear cryptanalysis.