Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2007/206

Automatic Search of Differential Path in MD4

Pierre-Alain Fouque and 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.

Category / Keywords: secret-key cryptography / hash functions MD4 differential path

Publication Info: Presented in the ECRYPT Hash Workshop, May 2007

Date: received 31 May 2007, last revised 31 May 2007

Contact author: gaetan leurent at ens fr

Available format(s): Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20070531:213511 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2007/206