Paper 2007/206

Automatic Search of Differential Path in MD4

Pierre-Alain Fouque, Gaetan Leurent, and Phong Nguyen

Abstract

In 2004, Wang et al. obtained breakthrough collision attacks on the main hash functions from the MD4 family. The attacks are differential attacks in which one closely follows the inner steps of the underlying compression function, based on a so-called differential path. It is generally assumed that such differential paths were found ``by hand''. In this paper, we present an algorithm which automatically finds suitable differential paths, in the case of MD4. As a first application, we obtain new differential paths for MD4, which improve upon previously known MD4 differential paths. This algorithm could be used to find new differential paths, and to build new attacks against MD4.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF PS
Category
Secret-key cryptography
Publication info
Published elsewhere. Presented in the ECRYPT Hash Workshop, May 2007
Keywords
hash functions MD4 differential path
Contact author(s)
gaetan leurent @ ens fr
History
2007-05-31: revised
2007-05-31: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2007/206
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2007/206,
      author = {Pierre-Alain Fouque and Gaetan Leurent and Phong Nguyen},
      title = {Automatic Search of Differential Path in {MD4}},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2007/206},
      year = {2007},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2007/206}
}
Note: In order to protect the privacy of readers, eprint.iacr.org does not use cookies or embedded third party content.