Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Fast Merkle Trees

From: "Russell O'Connor" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2017 14:55:25 -0400

On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 1:42 PM, Mark Friedenbach <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> I've been puzzling over your email since receiving it. I'm not sure it
> is possible to perform the attack you describe with the tree structure
> specified in the BIP. If I may rephrase your attack, I believe you are
> seeking a solution to the following:
>
> Want: An innocuous script and a malign script for which
>
>    double-SHA256(innocuous)
>
> is equal to either
>
>    fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r) or
>    fast-SHA256(r || double-SHA256(malign))
>

or  fast-SHA256(fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r1) || r0)
or  fast-SHA256(fast-SHA256(r1 || double-SHA256(malign)) || r0)
or ...

> where r is a freely chosen 32-byte nonce. This would allow the
> attacker to reveal the innocuous script before funds are sent to the
> MAST, then use the malign script to spend.
>
> Because of the double-SHA256 construction I do not see how this can be
> accomplished without a full break of SHA256.
>

The particular scenario I'm imagining is a collision between

    double-SHA256(innocuous)

and

    fast-SHA256(fast-SHA256(fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r2) || r1)
|| r0).

where innocuous is a Bitcoin Script that is between 32 and 55 bytes long.

Observe that when data is less than 55 bytes then double-SHA256(data) =
fast-SHA256(fast-SHA256(padding-SHA256(data)) || 0x8000...100) (which is
really the crux of the matter).

Therefore, to get our collision it suffices to find a collision between

    padding-SHA256(innocuous)

and

    fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r2) || r1

r1 can freely be set to the second half of padding-SHA256(innocuous), so it
suffices to find a collision between

   fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r2)

and the first half of padding-SHA256(innocuous) which is equal to the first
32 bytes of innocuous.

Imagine the first opcode of innocuous is the push of a value that the
attacker claims to be his 33-byte public key.
So long as the attacker doesn't need to prove that they know the discrete
log of this pubkey, they can grind r2 until the result of
fast-SHA256(double-SHA256(malign) || r2) contains the correct first couple
of bytes for the script header and the opcode for a 33-byte push.  I
believe that is only about 3 or 4 bytes of they need to grind out.