How thorough are the hash breaks, anyway?

[Arash Partow]

Hello,

NO sorry I can't understand the logic here, I think I understand the
maths behind message digests pretty well and to that point I don't see
how the recent results diminish the current crypto grade hash
functions in the least.

The researchers have brought about an obscure plain text and provided
another text that produces the same hash values


But in reality, what people (i.e.: attackers) want is something like this:

Attack at 1pm
to become
Attack at 3pm

with common hash values and not something like this:

AtTaZk @ Epn


Even if it did pass the crypto test i.e.: message digest, the literal
acceptance by a person would not pass. Now lets assume the case of
binary data, most data nowadays is compressed then encrypted. finding
a text which will also be uncompressible-per-compression-algorithm and
also pass the message digest for another particular text heck you'd
have better luck finding snow in the middle of hell. also nowadays some
people tend to use multiple digests of data sort of like pealing the
onion, in this case including the compression related difficulties etc
it all becomes very very near impossible. Possible but highly improbable


To date attacks on crypto (not the software but the algorithms) have
been centered around people implementing the algorithms incorrectly
i.e.: weak primes etc, in situations where everything is done by the
book, only software implementations of the algorithms and also users
of the system remain as the weak links in the chain known as a crypto
system.

In a final word I would like to say thank-you the people that
did this research, the results were needed in order to prove a theory.
However everything should be taken into context.




Arash Partow

__________________________________________________
Be one who knows what they don't know,
Instead of being one who knows not what they don't know,
Thinking they know everything about all things.
http://www.partow.net


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