7 December 2010

Congratulations to the winners of the fourth cryptanalysis and Hex-Hot-Ticks prizes

First, we are happy to announce that Dan Bernstein is the winner of the fourth Keccak cryptanalysis prize for his attack posted on NIST's hash forum Second preimages for 6 (7? (8??)) rounds of Keccak?. The attack exploits the low degree of Keccak-f's round function into a (second) preimage attack at the sponge function level and has been recently extended to 8 rounds, as suggested in the initial posting. We are currently arranging practical details with the winner to give him the awarded Belgian chocolates.

Second, we are also happy to announce that (in alphabetical order) Gerhard Hoffmann and Guillaume Sevestre are the ex aequo winners of the Hex-Hot-Ticks prize for the most interesting implementation of Keccak on exotic platforms. They will each receive a Himitsu-Bako secret box.

Congratulations to all of them!