Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions

Nicky Mouha; Gautham Sekar; Jean-Philippe Aumasson; Thomas Peyrin; Søren Steffen Thomsen; Meltem Sönmez Turan; Bart Preneel

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-16342-5_2

Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions

Nicky Mouha, Gautham Sekar, Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Thomas Peyrin, Søren Steffen Thomsen, Meltem Sönmez Turan, Bart Preneel

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

Abstract

ESSENCE is a family of cryptographic hash functions, accepted to the first round of NIST's SHA-3 competition. This paper presents the first known attacks on ESSENCE. We present a semi-free-start collision attack on 31 out of 32 rounds of ESSENCE-512, invalidating the design claim that at least 24 rounds of ESSENCE are secure against differential cryptanalysis. We develop a novel technique to satisfy the first nine rounds of the differential characteristic. Non-randomness in the outputs of the feedback function F is used to construct several distinguishers on a 14-round ESSENCE block cipher and the corresponding compression function, each requiring only 2^17 output bits. This observation is extended to key-recovery attacks on the block cipher. Next, we show that the omission of round constants allows slid pairs and fixed points to be found. These attacks are independent of the number of rounds. Finally, we suggest several countermeasures against these attacks, while still keeping the design simple and easy to analyze.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Information Security and Cryptology : 5th International Conference, Inscrypt 2009, Beijing, China, December 12-15, 2009. Revised Selected Papers
Publisher	Springer
Publication date	2010
Pages	15-34
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16342-5_2
Publication status	Published - 2010
Event	International Conference of Information Security and Cryptology - Beijing, China Duration: 1 Jan 2009 → … Conference number: 5th

Conference

Conference	International Conference of Information Security and Cryptology
Number	5th
City	Beijing, China
Period	01/01/2009 → …

Series	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Number	6151

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Mouha, N., Sekar, G., Aumasson, J.-P., Peyrin, T., Thomsen, S. S., Turan, M. S., & Preneel, B. (2010). Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions. In Information Security and Cryptology: 5th International Conference, Inscrypt 2009, Beijing, China, December 12-15, 2009. Revised Selected Papers (pp. 15-34). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16342-5_2

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Mouha, N, Sekar, G, Aumasson, J-P, Peyrin, T, Thomsen, SS, Turan, MS & Preneel, B 2010, Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions. in Information Security and Cryptology: 5th International Conference, Inscrypt 2009, Beijing, China, December 12-15, 2009. Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, no. 6151, pp. 15-34, International Conference of Information Security and Cryptology, Beijing, China, 01/01/2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16342-5_2

Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions. / Mouha, Nicky; Sekar, Gautham; Aumasson, Jean-Philippe et al.
Information Security and Cryptology: 5th International Conference, Inscrypt 2009, Beijing, China, December 12-15, 2009. Revised Selected Papers. Springer, 2010. p. 15-34 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; No. 6151).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

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AB - ESSENCE is a family of cryptographic hash functions, accepted to the first round of NIST's SHA-3 competition. This paper presents the first known attacks on ESSENCE. We present a semi-free-start collision attack on 31 out of 32 rounds of ESSENCE-512, invalidating the design claim that at least 24 rounds of ESSENCE are secure against differential cryptanalysis. We develop a novel technique to satisfy the first nine rounds of the differential characteristic. Non-randomness in the outputs of the feedback function F is used to construct several distinguishers on a 14-round ESSENCE block cipher and the corresponding compression function, each requiring only 2^17 output bits. This observation is extended to key-recovery attacks on the block cipher. Next, we show that the omission of round constants allows slid pairs and fixed points to be found. These attacks are independent of the number of rounds. Finally, we suggest several countermeasures against these attacks, while still keeping the design simple and easy to analyze.

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Mouha N, Sekar G, Aumasson JP, Peyrin T, Thomsen SS, Turan MS et al. Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions. In Information Security and Cryptology: 5th International Conference, Inscrypt 2009, Beijing, China, December 12-15, 2009. Revised Selected Papers. Springer. 2010. p. 15-34. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; No. 6151). doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16342-5_2

Cryptanalysis of the ESSENCE Family of Hash Functions

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