phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] data-dependent branching (Re: [PHC] A little nit which bothers me...)

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Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2014 13:53:58 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] data-dependent branching (Re: [PHC] A little nit which bothers me...)

A correction:

On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 01:39:04PM +0400, Solar Designer wrote:
> Here's a CPU attack on AntCrypt (as I understand it): define all
> possible two-function groups.  For 16 original functions, this will
> result in 256 dual-function functions, and if they're as tiny as they
> currently are they will probably still fit in a CPU's L1i cache.  Now
> you can define a dual-AntCrypt, testing two candidate passwords at a
> time, and using the CPU core's parallel processing capabilities (SIMD,
> multiple issue, super-scalar) it'll likely run no slower than a single
> AntCrypt does.  So you get a 2x performance boost for the attacker.
> Moreover, the cost of conditional branches is amortized,

This is true, but ...

> so the speedup might be slightly higher than 2x.

... this is not.  We replace two branches and two functions with one
branch and one dual-function, which is exactly 2x speedup (at best).

Alexander