The trail backtracking attack

In the context of evaluation of hash function we presented the trail backtracking attack. This attack is based on the study of differential trails and the probability of building a collision from it.
As many cryptanalysis tools it can be used by designers to show that a hash function does not present trails suitable for attacking the design. On the other hand the cryptanalyst can find trails in such a way that could create a collision with a certain probability.
The presentation will cover the concept of differential trails applied to hash function, the basics of the attack and practical examples of how we used trail backtracking to perform evaluation of the RadioGatún design, how the attacks to Panama (Rijmen et al FSE2001, Daemen and Van Assche at FSE2007) and to Grindahl (Peyrin ASIACRYPT2007) can be seen as a form of trail backtracking attack.

This is a joint work with Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters and Gilles Van Assche.

"The Trail Backtracking Attack.pdf"