Matt
Mon Feb 21 22:14:04 CST 2005
Galen,
There's a few things that should be said on all these "SHA-1 is cracked"
sites that rarely is.
A) No one has seen this paper that claims to have found a collision in SHA-1
in less than brute force attempts. It has not been released to the public,
so no memebers of the crypto community have had a chance to review it.
B) In the 2-3 page abstract from this paper, they state that their collision
was found with out the padding needed by SHA-1. So this may not be of any
real world use, as all (that I know of) SHA-1 implementations use padding
(as they're supposed to), and this attack may not work against padded
implementations.
C) Say the paper is right, and they can now break SHA-1 in ~2^53 attempts.
What does this mean to most people? Nothing. With these attacks, you
cannot just get "I will give you 1 million dollars" to "I will give you 10
million dollars". You'd have a better chance of getting "09sdfkj3uih3wi8"
to hash to the same value.
This is a prime example of how the media (and the uninformed tech community)
spreads FUD.
Matt Gibson - GSEC
"Galen" <galennews@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e4RayUHGFHA.560@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> In news:u5NlDBFGFHA.1084@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl,
> Matt Gibson <mattg@blueedgetech.ca> had this to say:
>
>
>> SHA-1 Is not "Cracked"
>>
>> Read before you panic and spread FUD.
>>
>> Matt Gibson - GSEC
>
> From Google:
>
> SHA-1 cracked!:
>
http://www.techspot.com/story17011.html
>
> Perhaps the OP has been reading the news?
>
> Galen
> --
>
> "My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me
> the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am
> in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial
> stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for
> mental exaltation." -- Sherlock Holmes
>
>