[amenghra]

laie makes it sound like they found two things (free-start collision attack and circular hash attack).

I agree the free-start part isn't very interesting but I don't think we have enough information to confirm or dismiss whether the circular hash attack part is novel.

[dsacco]

Using that philosophy, we have to be cautious about whether or not the Riemann hypothesis has been solved every time someone uploads a paper claiming a proof to arXiv, even if it's nonsensical (which this "proof" is), just because we haven't had a team of mathematicians peer review it.

Let me assure you: there is nothing novel here. There is no vulnerability. You want to start from a place of skepticism with these things, not a place of, "Well we don't have enough information to say it's not true..."

[simias]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I think it's fair to dismiss those claims until they're capable of coming with a better justification than "I developed an entirely new type of cryptanalysis theory to achieve this."

[jey]

Could you unpack "circular hash attack"? Googling was not very helpful.

[amenghra]

"circular hash attack" left me confused and waiting to hear the full story. I totally agree with "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".