On the impossibility of highly-efficient blockcipher-based hash functions

Abstract

Fix a small, non-empty set of blockcipher keys K. We say a blockcipher-based hash function is highly-efficient if it makes exactly one blockcipher call for each message block hashed, and all blockcipher calls use a key from K. Although a few highly-efficient constructions have been proposed, no one has been able to prove their security. In this paper we prove, in the ideal-cipher model, that it is impossible to construct a highly-efficient iterated blockcipher-based hash function that is provably secure. Our result implies, in particular, that the Tweakable Chain Hash (TCH) construction suggested by Liskov, Rivest, and Wagner [7] is not correct under an instantiation suggested for this construction, nor can TCH be correctly instantiated by any other efficient means. © International Association for Cryptologic Research 2005.