Paper 2012/634

Cryptanalysis of Double-Block-Length Hash Mode MJH

Deukjo Hong and Daesung Kwon

Abstract

A double-block-length (DBL) hash mode of block ciphers, MJH has been proved to be collision-resistant in the ideal cipher model upto $2^{2n/3- \log n}$ queries. In this paper we provide first cryptanalytic results for MJH. We show that a collision attack on MJH has the time complexity below the birthday bound. When block ciphers with 128-bit blocks are used, it has time complexity around $2^{124}$, which is to be compared to the birthday attack having complexity $2^{128}$. We also give a preimage attack on MJH. It has the time complexity of $2^{3n/2+1}$ with $n$-bit block ciphers, which is to be compared to the brute force attack having complexity $2^{2n}$.