Applying Grover's Algorithm to Hash Functions: A Software Perspective

Abstract: Quantum software frameworks provide software engineers with the tools to study quantum algorithms as applied to practical problems. We implement classical hash functions MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2, and SHA-3 as quantum oracles to study the computational resource requirements of conducting a preimage attack with Grover's Algorithm. We introduce an improvement to the SHA-3 oracle that reduces the number of logical qubits required in the Keccak block permutation by 40%.