Amplified boomerang attack against reduced-round shacal

Abstract

SHACAL is a 160-bit block cipher based on the hash standard SHA-1, as a submission to NESSIE. SHACAL uses the XOR, modular addition operation and the functions of bit-by-bit manner. These operations and functions make the differential cryptanalysis difficult, i.e, it is hard to find a long differential characteristic with high probability. But, we can find short differential characteristics with high probabilities. Using this fact, we discuss the security of SHACAL against an amplified boomerang attack. We find a 36-step boomerang-distinguisher and present attacks on reduced-round SHACAL with various key sizes. We can attack 39-step SHACAL with 256-bit key, and 47-step SHACAL with 512-bit key. In addition, we present differential attacks of reduced-round SHACAL with various key sizes.