The Mutilated AES Challenge

[dila]

Yes that sounds right. You can use techniques from linear cryptanalysis. My understanding is that this will lead to linear approximations for the function, but note that in this case the approximation will be exact, which should mean there is less computation involved.

By the way, if you solve the challenge you can give your solution as SHA256(your_name||solution) so that your solution is hidden but can be verified.