"Approximate" hashes

[David Honig]

At 06:02 PM 9/1/04 +0300, Marcel Popescu wrote:
>From: "Marcel Popescu" <Marcel_Popescu at microbilt.com>
>
>> Hence my question: is there some "approximate" hash function (which I
>could
>> use instead of SHA-1) which can verify that a text hashes "very close" to
>a
>> value? So that if I change, say, tabs into spaces, I won't get exactly the
>> same value, but I would get a "good enough"?

This is completely what secure hashes are supposed to prevent.  *Any* change
in the input will flip half the hash-bits on average.  Just like a block
cipher.  There is no input "nearness" preservation.  That's part of the point
of the algorithm.


>I just had an idea. Would this work?
>
>- let S be the input string, whose hash I want to verify
>- make S uppercase
>- remove everything but A-Z, 0-9, and common punctuation (!;:'",.?)
>- calculate the SHA1 hash of the result
>
>This should keep any insignificant changes out of the final result. 

You can encode your message in some format which is not subject
to mangling, and use a hash of that encoding.  You can then
decode the encoding back into unicode or whatever funky but
net-fragile character set you like.  This is somewhat like
ascii-armoring of PGP-encrypted messages.





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