Post-quantum security of the sponge construction

Post-quantum security of the sponge construction (PQCrypto 2018)
Jan Czajkowski, Leon Groot Bruinderink, Andreas Hülsing, Christian Schaffner, Dominique Unruh
[ eprint | official ]

We investigate the post-quantum security of hash functions based on the sponge construction. A crucial property for hash functions in the post-quantum setting is the collapsing property (a strengthening of collision-resistance). We show that the sponge construction is collapsing (and in consequence quantum collision-resistant) under suitable assumptions about the underlying block function. In particular, if the block function is a random function or a (non-invertible) random permutation, the sponge construction is collapsing.

(Merger of [CITE sponge] and Czajkowski, Bruinderink, Hülsing, Schaffner, Quantum preimage, 2nd-preimage, and collision resistance of SHA3, 2017.)