Attacks against GOST? Was: Protocol Construction

[Alexander Klimov]

On Sun, 2 Aug 2009, Joseph Ashwood wrote:
> > So far, evidence supports the idea that the stereotypical Soviet
> > tendency to overdesign might have been a better plan after all,
> > because the paranoia about future discoveries and breaks that
> > motivated that overdesign is being regularly proven out.
>
> And that is why Kelsey found an attack on GOST

Do you want to say that the GOST (28147-89) block cipher is broken? I
have never heard of an attack against it that is faster than the
exhaustive search.

By the way, it was not "overdesign" (IMO it is simpler even than DES),
nor it was an example of "the stereotypical Soviet..." According to an
informed source [1], it was specifically made to be not like military
ciphers:  its only purpose was to make something for non-military
cryptography that would not betray any Soviet cryptographic know-how
(this is why they chose to do something very similar to DES).

[1] Mikhail Maslennikov, "Cryptography and freedom" (in Russian)

-- 
Regards,
ASK

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