Preimage resistance beyond the birthday bound: Double-length hashing revisited

Security proofs are an essential part of modern cryptography. Often the challenge is not to come up with appropriate schemes but rather to technically prove that these satisfy the desired security properties. We provide for the first time techniques for proving asymptotically optimal preimage resistance bounds for block cipher based double length, double call hash functions. More precisely, we consider for some \keylength>\blocklength compression functions H:\{0,1\}^{\keylength+\blocklength} \rightarrow \{0,1\}^{2\blocklength} using two calls to an ideal block cipher with an \blocklength-bit block size. Optimally, an adversary trying to find a preimage for $H$ should require \Omega(2^{2\blocklength}) queries to the underlying block cipher. As a matter of fact there have been several attempts to prove the preimage resistance of such compression functions, but no proof did go beyond the \Omega(2^{\blocklength}) barrier, therefore leaving a huge gap when compared to the optimal bound. In this paper, we introduce two new techniques on how to lift this bound to \Omega(2^{2\blocklength}). We demonstrate our new techniques for a simple and natural design of $H$, being the concatenation of two instances of the well-known Davies-Meyer compression function

Analysis and Design of Blockcipher Based Cryptographic Algorithms

This thesis focuses on the analysis and design of hash functions and authenticated encryption schemes that are blockcipher based. We give an introduction into these fields of research – taking in a blockcipher based point of view – with special emphasis on the topics of double length, double call blockcipher based compression functions. The first main topic (thesis parts I - III) is on analysis and design of hash functions. We start with a collision security analysis of some well known double length blockcipher based compression functions and hash functions: Abreast-DM, Tandem-DM and MDC-4. We also propose new double length compression functions that have elevated collision security guarantees. We complement the collision analysis with a preimage analysis by stating (near) optimal security results for Abreast-DM, Tandem-DM, and Hirose-DM. Also, some generalizations are discussed. These are the first preimage security results for blockcipher based double length hash functions that go beyond the birthday barrier. We then raise the abstraction level and analyze the notion of ’hash function indifferentiability from a random oracle’. So we not anymore focus on how to obtain a good compression function but, instead, on how to obtain a good hash function using (other) cryptographic primitives. In particular we give some examples when this strong notion of hash function security might give questionable advice for building a practical hash function. In the second main topic (thesis part IV), which is on authenticated encryption schemes, we present an on-line authenticated encryption scheme, McOEx, that simultaneously achieves privacy and confidentiality and is secure against nonce-misuse. It is the first dedicated scheme that achieves high standards of security and – at the same time – is on-line computable.Die Schwerpunkte dieser Dissertation sind die Analyse und das Design von blockchiffrenbasierten Hashfunktionen (Abschnitte I-III) sowie die Entwicklung von robusten Verfahren zur authentifizierten erschlüsselung (Abschnitt IV). Die Arbeit beginnt mit einer Einführung in diese Themengebiete, wobei – insbesondere bei den Hashfunktionen – eine blockchiffrenzentrierte Perspektive eingenommen wird. Die Abschnitte I-III dieser Dissertation beschäftigen sich mit der Analyse und dem Design von Hashfunktionen. Zu Beginn werden die Kollisionssicherheit einiger wohlbekannter Kompressions- und Hashfunktionen mit zweifacher Blockchiffrenausgabelänge näher analysiert: Abreast-DM, Tandem-DMundMDC-4. Ebenso werden neue Designs vorgestellt, welche erhöhte Kollisionssicherheitsgarantien haben. Ergänzend zur Kollisionssicherheitsanalyse wird die Resistenz gegen Urbildangriffe von Kompressionsfunktionen doppelter Ausgabelänge untersucht. Dabei werden nahezu optimale Sicherheitsschranken für Abreast-DM, Tandem-DM und Hirose-DM abgeleitet. Einige Verallgemeinerungen sind ebenfalls Teil der Diskussion. Das sind die ersten Sicherheitsresultate gegen Urbildangriffe auf blockchiffrenbasierte Kompressionsfunktionen doppelter Länge, die weit über die bis dahin bekannten Sicherheitsresultate hinausgehen. Daran anschließend folgt eine Betrachtung, die auf einem erhöhten Abstraktionslevel durchgeführt wird und den Begriff der Undifferenzierbarkeit einer Hashfunktion von einem Zufallsorakel diskutiert. Hierbei liegt der Fokus nicht darauf, wie man eine gute Kompressionfunktion auf Basis anderer kryptographischer Funktionen erstellt, sondern auf dem Design einer Hashfunktionen auf Basis einer Kompressionsfunktion. Unter Einnahme eines eher praktischen Standpunktes wird anhand einiger Beispiele aufgezeigt, dass die relativ starke Eigenschaft der Undifferenzierbarkeit einer Hashfunktion zu widersprüchlichen Designempfehlungen für praktikable Hashfunktionen führen kann. Im zweiten Schwerpunkt, in Abschnitt IV, werden Verfahren zur authentifizierten Verschlüsselung behandelt. Es wird ein neues Schema zur authentifizierten Verschlüsselung vorgestellt,McOEx. Es schützt gleichzeitig die Integrität und die Vertrauchlichkeit einer Nachricht. McOEx ist das erste konkrete Schema das sowohl robust gegen die Wiederverwendung von Nonces ist und gleichzeitig on-line berechnet werden kann

Some Observations on SHAMATA

In this note we discuss some observation of the SHA-3 candidate SHAMATA. We observe that its internal block cipher is very weak, which could possibly lead to an attack on the hash function

Some Observations on Indifferentiability

At Crypto 2005, Coron et al. introduced a formalism to study the presence or absence of structural flaws in iterated hash functions: If one cannot differentiate a hash function using ideal primitives from a random oracle, it is considered structurally sound, while the ability to differentiate it from a random oracle indicates a structural weakness. This model was devised as a tool to see subtle real world weaknesses while in the random oracle world. In this paper we take in a practical point of view. We show, using well known examples like NMAC and the Mix-Compress-Mix (MCM) construction, how we can prove a hash construction secure and insecure at the same time in the indifferentiability setting. These constructions do not differ in their implementation but only on an abstract level. Naturally, this gives rise to the question what to conclude for the implemented hash function. Our results cast doubts about the notion of “indifferentiability from a random oracle” to be a mandatory, practically relevant criterion (as e.g., proposed by Knudsen [16] for the SHA-3 competition) to separate good hash structures from bad ones

Related-Key Rectangle Attack of the Full 80-Round HAS-160 Encryption Mode

In this paper we investigate the security of the encryption mode of the HAS-160 hash function. HAS-160 is a Korean hash standard which is widely used in Korea\u27s industry. The structure of HAS-160 is similar to SHA-1 but includes some improvements. The encryption mode of HAS-160 is defined similarly as the encryption mode of SHA-1 that is called SHACAL-1. In 2006, Dunkelman et. al. successfully broke the full 80-round SHACAL-1. In this paper, we present the first cryptographic attack that breaks the encryption mode of the full 80-round HAS-160. SHACAL-1 and the encryption mode of HAS-160 are both blockciphers with key size 512 bits and plain-/ciphertext size of 160 bits. We will apply a key recovery attack that needs about 2^{155} chosen plaintexts and 2^{375.98} 80-round HAS-160 encryptions. The attack does not aim for a collision, preimage or 2nd-preimage attack, but it shows that HAS-160 used as a block cipher can be differentiated from an ideal cipher faster than exhaustive search

Attacking Reduced Rounds of the ARIA Block Cipher

ARIA is a block cipher proposed at ICISC\u2703. Its design is very similar to the advanced encryption standard (AES). The authors propose that on 32-bit processors, the encryption speed is at least 70% of that of the AES. They claim to offer a higher security level than AES. In this paper we present two attacks of reduced round ARIA which shows some weaknesses of the cipher. Moreover, our attacks have the lowest memory requirements compared to existing attacks on ARIA with an increase in the time complexity

Security of Cyclic Double Block Length Hash Functions including Abreast-DM

We provide the first proof of security for Abreast-DM, one of the oldest and most well-known constructions for turning a block cipher with $n$-bit block length and $2n$-bit key length into a 2n-bit cryptographic hash function. In particular, we prove that when Abreast-DM is instantiated with AES-256, i.e. a block cipher with 128-bit block length and 256-bit key length, any adversary that asks less than 2^124.42 queries cannot find a collision with success probability greater than 1/2. Surprisingly, this about 15 years old construction is one of the few constructions that have the desirable feature of a near-optimal collision resistance guarantee. We generalize our techniques used in the proof of Abreast-DM to a huge class of double block length (DBL) hash functions that we will call Cyclic-DM. Using this generalized theorem we are able to derive several DBL constructions that lead to compression functions that even have a higher security guarantee and are more efficient than Abreast-DM. Furthermore we give DBL constructions that have the highest security guarantee of all DBL compression functions currently known in literature. We also provide an analysis of preimage resistance for Cyclic-DM compression functions. Note that this work has been already presented at Dagstuhl \u2709

The Collision Security of MDC-4

There are four somewhat classical double length block cipher based compression functions known: MDC-2, MDC-4, Abreast-DM, and Tandem-DM. They all have been developed over 20 years ago. In recent years, cryptographic research has put a focus on block cipher based hashing and found collision security results for three of them (MDC-2, Abreast-DM, Tandem-DM). In this paper, we add MDC-4, which is part of the IBM CLiC cryptographic module (FIPS 140-2 Security Policy for IBM CrytoLite in C, October 2003), to that list by showing that - \u27instantiated\u27 using an ideal block cipher with 128 bit key/plaintext/ciphertext size - no adversary asking less than $2^{74.76}$ queries can find a collision with probability greater than $1/2$. This is the first result on the collision security of the hash function MDC-4. The compression function MDC-4 is created by interconnecting two MDC-2 compression functions but only hashing one message block with them instead of two. The developers aim for MDC-4 was to offer a higher security margin, when compared to MEDC-2, but still being fast enough for practical purposes. The MDC-2 collision security proof of Steinberger (EUROCRYPT 2007) cannot be directly applied to MDC-4 due to the structural differences. Although sharing many commonalities, our proof for MDC-4 is much shorter and we claim that our presentation is also easier to grasp

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements