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Some Observations on Indifferentiability

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Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6168))

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Abstract

At Crypto 2005, Coron et al. introduced a formalism to study the presence or absence of structural flaws in iterated hash functions. If one cannot differentiate a hash function using ideal primitives from a random oracle, it is considered structurally sound, while the ability to differentiate it from a random oracle indicates a structural weakness. This model was devised as a tool to see subtle real world weaknesses while in the random oracle world. In this paper we take in a practical point of view. We show, using well known examples like NMAC and the Mix-Compress-Mix (MCM) construction, how we can prove a hash construction secure and insecure at the same time in the indifferentiability setting. These constructions do not differ in their implementation but only on an abstract level. Naturally, this gives rise to the question what to conclude for the implemented hash function.

Our results cast doubts about the notion of “indifferentiability from a random oracle” to be a mandatory, practically relevant criterion (as e.g., proposed by Knudsen [17] for the SHA-3 competition) to separate good hash structures from bad ones.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany

    Ewan Fleischmann, Michael Gorski & Stefan Lucks

Authors
  1. Ewan Fleischmann
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  2. Michael Gorski
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  3. Stefan Lucks
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Macquarie University,, NSW 2109, North Ryde, Australia

    Ron Steinfeld

  2. Qualcomm Incorporated, Suite 301, Level 3, 77 King Street, NSW 2000, Sydney, Australia

    Philip Hawkes

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Fleischmann, E., Gorski, M., Lucks, S. (2010). Some Observations on Indifferentiability. In: Steinfeld, R., Hawkes, P. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6168. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14081-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14081-5_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14080-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14081-5

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