The Rebound Attack and Subspace Distinguishers: Application to Whirlpool

We introduce the rebound attack as a variant of differential cryptanalysis on hash functions and apply it to the hash function Whirlpool, standardized by ISO/IEC. We give attacks on reduced variants of the 10-round Whirlpool hash function and compression function. Our results are collisions for 5.5 and near-collisions for 7.5 rounds on the hash function, as well as semi-free-start collisions for 7.5 and semi-free-start near-collisions for 9.5 rounds on the compression function. Additionally, we introduce the subspace problem as a generalization of near-collision resistance. Finally, we present the first distinguishers that apply to the full compression function and the full underlying block cipher W of Whirlpool.