Title: TWISTER_π – a framework for secure and fast hash functions

Authors: Ewan Fleischmann, Christian Forler, Michael Gorski, Stefan Lucks

Addresses: Chair of Media Security, Faculty of Media, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Weimar, Germany. ' Sirrix AG, Bochum, Germany. ' Chair of Media Security, Faculty of Media, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Weimar, Germany. ' Chair of Media Security, Faculty of Media, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Weimar, Germany

Abstract: In this paper we present TWISTER_π, a framework for hash functions. It is an improved version of TWISTER, a candidate of the NIST SHA-3 hash function competition. TWISTER_π is built upon the ideas of wide pipe and sponge functions. The core of this framework is a – very easy to analyse – Twister-Round providing both extremely fast diffusion as well as collision-freeness for one internal Twister-Round. The total security level is claimed to be not below 2^n/2 for collision attacks and 2ⁿ for (2nd) pre-image attacks. TWISTER_π instantiations are secure against all known generic attacks. We also propose two instances TWISTER_π-n for hash output sizes n = 256 and n = 512. These instantiations are highly optimised for 64-bit architectures and run very fast in hardware and software, e.g TWISTER_π-256 is faster than SHA2-256 on 64-bit platforms and TWISTER_π-512 is faster than SHA2-512 on 32-bit platforms. Furthermore, TWISTER_π scales very well on low-end platforms.

Keywords: hash functions; sponge functions; AES; HAIFA; wide pipe functions; randomised hashing; information security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJACT.2010.033800

International Journal of Applied Cryptography, 2010 Vol.2 No.1, pp.68 - 81

Published online: 01 Jul 2010 *

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