Boomerang attack

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In cryptography, the boomerang attack is a method for the cryptanalysis of block ciphers based on differential cryptanalysis. The attack was published in 1999 by David Wagner, who used it to break the COCONUT98 cipher.

The boomerang attack has allowed new avenues of attack for many ciphers previously deemed safe from differential cryptanalysis.

Refinements on the boomerang attack have been published: the amplified boomerang attack, and the rectangle attack.

Due to the similarity of a Merkle–Damgård construction with a block cipher, this attack may also be applicable to certain hash functions such as MD5.^[1]