Dmitry Khovratovich

New Methods in Symmetric Cryptanalysis: How to Break Ciphers and Hash Functions Dmitry Khovratovich

Cryptanalysis is the art of recovery of the hidden information. It starts with a search for a weakness in a cryptosystem, for a flaw that was missed by its designer. Any mistake, any missed property may become a target for a cryptanalyst and a starting point for a compromise of the cryptosystem's security -- a break. This thesis describes attacks on block ciphers and hash functions. We are primarily interested in the methods, that are used in attacks on at least two different primitives. Cryptanalysis is often described as a cloud of non-related and dedicated attacks, which can be used only once. We introduce it in a more structured way.