[Cryptography] BLAKE2: "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" Than MD5

[Stephen Farrell]

On 03/24/2014 11:20 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> While it's hardly ideal, the best way we have to estimate the
> longevity of our artifacts it to look at the history of related
> artifacts.  CS tends to view every new advance as ab initio - all
> that old crud is now obsolete and not worth thinking about.  I was
> quite shocked at myself for never having thought about how long
> cryptosystems past had actually survived in the real world.  I
> probably could not have given a reasonable quick estimate for any of
> these.
> 
> Of course, the push for "standards" - and particular the push for
> *one* standard algorithm of each class - tends to push those that
> didn't make it to the top out of the picture.  That makes it even
> harder to learn from the mistakes - and successes - of the past.
> 
> I'd love to see your history published.  It will be a valuable
> reference.

I agree with the above.

It'd also be a fine thing if such a history tracked the length
of time it takes to get rid of algorithms from whenever they
are considered dubious or not-good-enough-for-new-stuff. But
that's just me asking for someone else to do more work so I
don't expect it to happen.

S.