We provide a formal proof for the indifferentiability of SKINNY-HASH internal function from a random oracle. SKINNY-HASH is a family of sponge-based hash functions that use functions (instead of permutations) as primitives, and it was selected as one of the second round candidates of the NIST lightweight cryptography competition. Its internal function is constructed from the tweakable block cipher SKINNY. The construction of the internal function is very simple and the designers claim n-bit security, where n is the block length of SKINNY. However, a formal security proof of this claim is not given in the original specification of SKINNY-HASH. In this paper, we formally prove that the internal function of SKINNY-HASH has n-bit security, i.e., it is indifferentiable from a random oracle up to O(2n) queries, substantiating the security claim of the designers.

A hash function is an important primitive for cryptographic protocols. Since algorithms of well-known hash functions are almost serial, it seems difficult to take full advantage of recent multi-core processors. This paper proposes a multilane hashing (MLH) mode that achieves both of high parallelism and high security. The MLH mode is designed in such a way that the processing speed is almost linear in the number of processors. Since the MLH mode exploits an existing hash function as a black box, it is applicable to any hash function. The bound on the indifferentiability of the MLH mode from a random oracle is beyond the birthday bound on the output length of an underlying primitive.

In this paper, the substitutability of the indifferentiability framework with non-sequential scheduling is examined by reformulating the framework through applying the Task-PIOA framework, which provides non-sequential activation with oblivious task sequences. First, the indifferentiability framework with non-sequential scheduling is shown to be able to retain the substitutability. Thus, the substitutability can be applied in another situation that processes of the systems may behave non-sequentially. Next, this framework is shown to be closely related to reducibility of systems. Reducibility is useful to discuss about the construction of a system from a weaker system. Finally, two modelings with respectively sequential scheduling and non-sequential scheduling are shown to be mutually independent. We find examples of systems which are indifferentiable under one model but differentiable under the other. Thus, the importance of scheduling in the indifferentiability framework is clarified.

Since the Merkle-Damgård hash function (denoted by MDFH) that uses a fixed input length random oracle as a compression function is not indifferentiable from a random oracle (denoted by RO) due to the extension attack, there is no guarantee for the security of cryptosystems, which are secure in the RO model, when RO is instantiated with MDHF. This fact motivates us to establish a criteria methodology for confirming cryptosystems security when RO is instantiated with MDHF. In this paper, we confirm cryptosystems security by using the following approach: 1.Find a weakened random oracle (denoted by WRO) which leaks values needed to realize the extension attack. 2.Prove that MDHF is indifferentiable from WRO. 3.Prove cryptosystems security in the WRO model. The indifferentiability framework of Maurer, Renner and Holenstein guarantees that we can securely use the cryptosystem when WRO is instantiated with MDHF. Thus we concentrate on such finding WRO. We propose Traceable Random Oracle (denoted by TRO) which leaks values enough to permit the extension attack. By using TRO, we can easily confirm the security of OAEP encryption scheme and variants of OAEP encryption scheme. However, there are several practical cryptosystems whose security cannot be confirmed by TRO (e.g. RSA-KEM). This is because TRO leaks values that are irrelevant to the extension attack. Therefore, we propose another WRO, Extension Attack Simulatable Random Oracle (denoted by ERO), which leaks just the value needed for the extension attack. Fortunately, ERO is necessary and sufficient to confirm the security of cryptosystems under MDHF. This means that the security of any cryptosystem under MDHF is equivalent to that under the ERO model. We prove that RSA-KEM is secure in the ERO model.