IOTA is dishing out shares of $220K bounty — if you can crack its new hash function

[PRIBO247]

IOTA Foundation, the company wanting to be the
cryptocurrency for the Internet-of-Things (IoT), has just
launched a new hash function, and it’s dishing out shares of a
$220,000 (200,000 euro) bounty to anyone that can crack it.
The new hash function, known as Troika, has been designed by
cryptographers from cyber security firm, Cybercrypt. IOTA
hopes the new hash function will lay the cryptographic and
encryption groundwork for what will become the final IOTA
protocol for encrypting its distibuted ledger.
If you’re not up-to-speed on hash functions, they are basically
ways of encrypting and mapping data of varying size to an
identifier of a consistent size. By design, hash functions should
only work one way and should not be able to be reversed
engineered, meaning a hacker shouldn’t be able to locate the
original data if they have the hash.
The foundation claims that its new hash function has been
designed to surpass all current cryptanalytic testing and
attacks. While IOTA hasn’t claimed it’s unhackable, that is
quite a bold claim, as with enough time, most things usually
can be hacked.
IOTA is putting its name on the line by offering a total of
$220,000 bounty for anyone that can help crack and improve
the cryptography.
“We hope that this competition will bring the cryptographic
community together on solving security in the Internet-of-
Things,” said David Sønstebø, Co-Founder and Co-chair of
IOTA Foundation, in the announcement.
There are two challenges for cryptanalysts to participate in:
“collisions” and “preimage.” A collisions attack is where
crackers try to find two duplicate input variables that end up
producing the same hash value. A preimage attack is sort of
the inverse principle, where the analyst will try to find the
message data connected to a specific hash value.
If either of these attacks can be successfully carried out, it
would obviously point to potential weaknesses in the code of
the hash.
IOTA is offering a host of prizes ranging from $115 (100 euro)
to  $40,000 (35,000 euro) based on which part of the hash
function is cracked. The prizes will be paid out once the hack
is confirmed by Cybercrypt, if successful, the prizes will be
paid out in either Euros or MIOTA – if you’re into that kind of
thing.

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/12/20/