Abstract
In recent years, neural network-based differential distinguishers have demonstrated significant advantages in accuracy and effi-ciency over traditional differential distinguishers in symmetric cipher differential analysis. However, when dealing with ciphers involving a higher number of encryption rounds, neural network differential distinguishers still struggle to accurately identify ci-phertext pairs. To address this issue, this study proposes a neural network differential distinguisher model based on attention mechanisms and optimized ciphertext input structures. Specifically, the model first innovates the residual structure within the attention mechanism to maximize the weight of highly discriminative features, enhancing the feature extraction capability of the improved model. Secondly, a multi-scale convolution method is employed, integrating the network structure ideas of RegNet, with the addition of convolutional branches and optimization of activation functions, which further enhances the model's feature ex-traction capability. Finally, a multi-ciphertext input pattern is introduced to improve the input data information, and random key encryption is applied to the input ciphertext structure to construct multi-feature information representations of the ciphertext and encryption functions. The results from 5-8 rounds of experiments on Speck 32/64 indicate that the proposed new neural distinguisher can significantly improve discrimination accuracy to a maximum of 1.65%. On this basis, we carried out an optimization study on the construction method of the multi-ciphertext-pair dataset. The new dataset can increase the accuracy of the distinguisher by 49.16% compared to that of the single-ciphertext-pair case, and can extend the number of attack rounds from 7 to 8.