A new hash family obtained by modifying the SHA-2 family

TLDR: The general idea of "multiple feed-forward" for the construction of cryptographic hash functions is introduced, which can provide increased resistance to the Chabaud-Joux type "perturbation-correction" collision attacks.

Abstract: In this work, we study several properties of the SHA-2 design which have been utilized in recent collision attacks against reduced round SHA-2. Small modifications to the SHA-2 design are suggested to thwart these attacks. The modified round function provides the same resistance to linearization attacks as the original SHA-2 round function, but, provides better resistance to non-linear attacks. Our next contribution is to introduce the general idea of "multiple feed-forward" for the construction of cryptographic hash functions. This can provide increased resistance to the Chabaud-Joux type "perturbation-correction" collision attacks. The idea of feed-forward is taken further by introducing the idea of feed-forward across message blocks leading to resistance against generic multi-collision attacks. The net effect of the suggested changes to the SHA-2 design has insignificant impact on the efficiency of computing the digest.