Algebraic Aspects of the Russian Hash Standard GOST R 34.11-2012

New GOST R 34.11-2012 standard has been recently selected by the Russian government to replace the old one. The algorithm is based on the hash function Stribog introduced in 2010. The high-level structure of the new hash function is similar to GOST R 34.11-94 with minor modifications. However, the compression function was changed significantly. Such a choice of the compression algorithm has been motivated by the Rjndael due to simplicity and understandable algebraic structure. In this paper we consider a number of algebraic aspects of the GOST R 34.11. We show how one can express the cipher in AES-like form over the finite field F28 , and consider some approaches that can be used for the fast software implementation.