| General | |
|---|---|
| Designers | S. Miyaguchi K. Ohta M. Iwata |
| First published | 1990 |
| Derived from | FEAL |
| Detail | |
| Digest sizes | 128 bits |
| Structure | Iterated hash function |
| Rounds | 8 |
Incryptography,N-hash is acryptographic hash function based on theFEAL round function, and is now considered insecure. It was proposed in 1990 in an article by Miyaguchi, Ohta, and Iwata;[1] weaknesses were published the following year.[2]
N-hash has a 128-bit hash size. A message is divided into 128-bit blocks, and each block is combined with the hash value computed so far using thegcompression function.g contains eight rounds, each of which uses anF function, similar to the one used byFEAL.
Eli Biham andAdi Shamir (1991) applied the technique ofdifferential cryptanalysis to N-hash, and showed thatcollisions could be generated faster than by abirthday attack for N-hash variants with even up to 12 rounds.[2]
N-hash follows an earlyblock cipher–based approach tocryptographic hash function design, in which thecompression function is constructed from a cipher-likeround function rather than from a dedicated hash-specific primitive. Such designs were common in the late 1980s and early 1990s, prior to the widespread adoption of purpose-built hash functions.[3][4][5] Thechaining mechanism of N-hash combines the output of the round function with both the current message block and the previoushash state. This structure was later studied in the context of genericblock cipher–based hash constructions and their resistance to knowncryptanalytic techniques.[2][6]
The cryptanalysis of N-hash highlighted the risks of directly reusingblock cipher components in hash function design without sufficient security margins. Attacks on N-hash demonstrated that structural properties exploitable inencryption algorithms could also underminecollision resistance when applied in a hashing context.[2][7][8] As a result of these findings, N-hash was never adopted in practical cryptographic applications. It is cited primarily in academic literature as an early example that influenced later research into secure hash function construction and the separation of design principles for encryption and hashing.[9]
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