Finding Hash Collisions

Hash functions play an important role in informationtechnology. They are incorporated in many securityprotocols and security-critical applications andensure essential security properties for the overallsystems.To verify their current status of security, hashfunctions are regularly exposed to new attacks fromthe scientific community. Almost all of these attacksare executed on standard PCs. However, the relevanceof such attacks is limited: real attackers are notconfined to the use of standard PCs. Instead theycould develop specialized hardware that executesattacks much faster or cost-efficient.In this book we examine which alternative hardwaretechnologies are suited for developing specializedarchitectures for the execution of attacks on hashfunctions. As a proof-of-concept, we develop a verycost-efficient microprocessor with a specializedinstruction set and corresponding assembler software.Based on this, we implement a full hardware unit tosearch for collisions in hash functions. We show thatexecuting attacks on our architecture is, given afixed amount of money, multiple times faster than onstandard PCs.

Autorentext

Dipl.-Ing. Sven Schäge has received his diploma in IT-Security at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Currently, he is working as a scientific researcher at the Horst Görtz Institute in Bochum, one of the largest research institutes for IT-Security in Europe. His research interests are cryptographic protocols and anonymous communication.

Klappentext
Hash functions play an important role in information technology. They are incorporated in many security protocols and security-critical applications and ensure essential security properties for the overall systems. To verify their current status of security, hash functions are regularly exposed to new attacks from the scientific community. Almost all of these attacks are executed on standard PCs. However, the relevance of such attacks is limited: real attackers are not confined to the use of standard PCs. Instead they could develop specialized hardware that executes attacks much faster or cost-efficient. In this book we examine which alternative hardware technologies are suited for developing specialized architectures for the execution of attacks on hash functions. As a proof-of-concept, we develop a very cost-efficient microprocessor with a specialized instruction set and corresponding assembler software. Based on this, we implement a full hardware unit to search for collisions in hash functions. We show that executing attacks on our architecture is, given a fixed amount of money, multiple times faster than on standard PCs.