HCAHF: A New Family of CA based Hash Functions
Cryptographic hash functions (CHF) represent a core cryptographic primitive. They have application in digital signature and message authentication protocols. Their main building block are Boolean functions. Those functions provide pseudo randomness and sensitivity to the input. They also help prevent and lower the risk of attacks targeted at CHF. Cellular automata (CA) are a class of Boolean functions that exhibit good cryptographic properties and display a chaotic behavior. In this article, a new hash function based on CA is proposed. A description of the algorithm and the security measures to increase the robustness of the construction are presented. A security analysis against generic and dedicated attacks is included. It shows that the hashing algorithm has good security features and meet the security requirements of a good hashing scheme. The results of the tests and the properties of the CA used demonstrate the good statistical and cryptographic properties of the hash function.