Seminar by Souradyuti Paul
Cryptographic hash functions and their security
Souradyuti Paul
University of Waterloo
Date: Saturday, July 16th, 2013
Time: 3:30PM
Venue: CS102.Abstract:
Hash functions are one of the most used cryptographic primitives. They are used in signature schemes, message authentication codes, enciphering schemes and in many protocols such as password hashing and commitment protocols. The talk is broadly divided into three parts: First, I shall present a few mathematical definitions that capture several important security properties of a hash function: collision resistance, 1st/2nd pre-image resistance, indifferentiability security are some of them. Then, I will describe the various hash function modes of operation – namely, Merkle-Damgard (SHA-0/1/2/3), Widepipe, Fast-widepipe, JH, Sponge and Groestl (maybe some more, if time permits). In the last part, I shall explain the strengths and weaknesses of various modes with respect to their efficiency and security.
The talk relies on materials taken from the research work by me and my collaborators, as well as by many others. The experience, in most part, has been gained through my participation in the SHA-3 hash function standardization project (2008-2012) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA. Among many research articles, I shall frequently refer to the results documented in the following three official reports published by the department of commerce, government of USA.
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/Round1/documents/sha3_NISTIR7620.pdfhttp://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistir/ir7764/nistir-7764.pdfhttp://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2012/NIST.IR.7896.pdf
About the speaker:
Dr. Souradyuti Paul obtained the Ph.D. degree in cryptography and data security from KU Leuven, Belgium in 2006. In a research career spanning more than a decade, Dr. Paul has worked in various areas of cryptography and data security: stream ciphers, hash functions, public key cryptography and software security are some of them. Some of his notable works are analysis of the most widely used stream cipher RC4, and on hash function modes of operation. He has served on the selection committee for the US government hash function standard SHA-3 from 2008 until 2012. He was a recipient of Indian National Mathematical Olympiad (INMO) award in 1992. Presently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the faculty of mathematics of University of Waterloo, Canada.