Journal of Applied Sciences1812-56541812-5662Asian Network for Scientific Information10.3923/jas.2013.673.682JamilN. MahmodR. Z`abaM.R. UdzirN.I. ZukarnainZ.A. 52013135Hash function is an important cryptographic primitive used
in a wide range of applications, for example, for message authentication and
in digital signatures. MD 4/5 and SHA-0/1/2 are examples of widely used hash
functions, but except for SHA-2 (SHA-224, 256, 384, 512), they were all broken
in 2005 after more than a decade of use. Since, then, the structure and components
of cryptographic hash functions have been studied and revisited extensively
by the cryptographic community. STITCH-256 was introduced to overcome problems
faced by the MD- and SHA-family hash functions. STITCH-256 employs the Balanced
Feistel network and its step operation runs in four parallel branches. The algorithm
was claimed to produce good diffusion and its outputs were claimed to be random.
To evaluate its suitability for such purposes, avalanche and empirical statisti-
cal tests are commonly employed to show that there is empirical evidence supporting
the claims. In this study, we report on the studies that were conducted on the
1000 sample of 256 bit of output from STITCH-256 algorithm. The studies include
the study of diffusion and statistical properties of STITCH-256 using avalanche
test and nine statistical tests. The results suggest that the claims were true
where STITCH-256 produces good avalanche effect, thus good diffusion property
and its outputs appear random.]]>Biham, E., R. Chen, A. Joux, P. Carribault, C. Lemuet and W. Jalby,20052005pp: 36-57pp: 36-57Damgard, I.B.,19901990pp: 416-427pp: 416-427FIPS 180,19931993NIST,19951995Jamil, N., R. Mahmod, M.R. Z'aba, N.I. Udzir and Z.A. Zukarnain,20121515261536Merkle, R.C.,19891989pp: 428-446pp: 428-446Rivest, R.L.,19921992Rivest, R.L.,19921992Rukhin, A., J. Soto, J. Nechvatal, M. Smid and E. Barker et al.,20012001Soto, J. and L. Bassham,20002000Van Rompay, B., A. Biryukov, B. Preneel and J. Vandewalle,20032003pp: 228245Wang, X., X. Lai, D. Feng, and H. Yu,20042004Wang, X., X. Lai, D. Feng, H. Chen and X. Yu,20052005pp: 118Wang, X., Y.L. Yin and H. Yu,20052005pp: 17-36pp: 17-36Wang, X. and H. Yu,20052005pp: 1935Wang, X., H. Yu and Y.L. Yin,20053621116Wolfram, S.,198410135Yu, H., X. Wang, A. Yun and S. Park,20062006pp: 89-110pp: 89-110Zheng, Y., J. Pieprzyk and J. Seberry,19931993pp: 83-104pp: 83-104