phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Panel: Please require the finalists to help with benchmarks

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Message-ID: <20150403104145.GA24902@openwall.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 13:41:45 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Panel: Please require the finalists to help with benchmarks

On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 06:17:00PM -0700, Bill Cox wrote:
> For benchmarking, authors should pick a minimum t_cost they feel
> is secure, and a number of rounds that give the best memory*time defense
> with good compute time hardness.  I still have not heard any reasons we
> need more than the current reduced Blake2b round or more than 2 of
> Alexander's new hash for any security reasons

"Good compute time hardness" is a reason to possibly go for more rounds.
I've previously shown that on a currently relevant machine 6 pwxform
rounds is nearly optimal in terms of memory*time where the attacker's
time factor is estimated from the number of sequential multiplies.

6 pwxform rounds (along with other current defaults) also provides
bcrypt-like frequency/parallelism of S-box lookups.  This is relevant
for GPU attacks.  Reducing the number of rounds slightly may be OK,
though, since the reduction in frequency of S-box lookups is much slower
than linear.  Maybe being e.g. 1/3 worse than bcrypt would still be OK.

> other than to make memory indistinguishable from random,

There might not be a difference in this respect for pwxform rounds
counts of 1 or 2 vs. 6 anyway.  Like I said, yescrypt's V passes my
randomness tests at PWXrounds = 1 as well.  However, it might be
distinguished from random either way if you know just what properties
to check for.  For example, for scrypt you'd check V_{i+1} = H(V_i).

> and I don't see that as a particularly important goal.

I agree it isn't a particularly important goal.

Alexander