EFFICIENT DESIGN OF ONE-WAY HASH FUNCTION USING CELLULAR AUTOMATA

摘要

A one-way hash function H(M) operates on an arbitrary length message, M and it returns a fixed length hash value h. The two main properties of such hash function are - it is irreversible in nature and it is hard to find another message M', such that H(M) = H(M'). It has several applications, such as, public-key cryptography, distributed database security, network security etc. Most oneway hash functions available in the literature ([1]-[4]) has 2r input and r output, where r is the number of bits. This paper presents a new one-way hash function using cellular automata(CA), which has been found to be a potential alternative to the existing schemes. The proposed scheme hashes arbitrary length messages into fixed r-bithash value. Due to the simple, regular, modular, cascadable and local inter- connection structure of CA, the implementation of this scheme becomes attractive and simple. The proposed scheme provides better security against different types of attacks because, besides using a general hashing strategy analogous to the other existing ones, it also additionally incorporates features of non-group, non-linear Multiple At-tractor CAs.