Fwd: Potential SHA 1 Hack Using Distributed Computing - Near Miss(es) May be Good Enough

[Christian Rechberger]

Quoting Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman at vpnc.org>:

> At 11:00 PM -0700 8/13/07, Aram Perez wrote:
>> Anyone know more about this?
>
> I have the same question. I could not find any description of *why*  
> they think that finding near-misses is going to help the research.  
> It's not clear if they are taking their own path, or trying to  
> improve Wang's path, or what.

The mentioned article is indeed confusing, the information in there  
took apparently several hops.

To address your questions: Indeed, we have our own "path", but more  
importantly we developed a new method to speed-up generation and  
testing of candidate message pairs and apply it to SHA-1. The  
resulting work factor is still quite high, hence we ask for  
contributions via the BOINC framework.

More information on cryptanalytic details, type of collision, and  
resulting work factor will appear later this year.

-Christian


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