On Jul 8, 2009, at 12:56 PM, Brian Mearns wrote:
I'm considering making my default hash RIPEMD160: does anyone have any
opinions on how this compares to SHA-2 algorithms in terms of both
security and availability? I like the idea that RIPEMD was developed
in an academic community instead of the NSA, but if there are genuine
benefits to using SHA, I have no problem looking past this bit of
romanticism. I'm especially curious if RIPEMD160 is commonly available
in popular PGP clients.
RIPEMD160 is nearly universally supported in popular PGP clients.
It's been around for a long time.
That said, you can't compare it to SHA-2. I believe your academia/NSA
comparison is invalid (it's really just romanticism), but I'm not even
going to bother to restart the common algorithm/peer review/more
attacks/etc discussion that we've had a zillion times on this list,
and instead jump right to the easy reason: RIPEMD160 is 160 bits
long. SHA-2 is (at minimum) 224 bits long, and can go up to 512 bits
long.
224 > 160.
512 is very > 160.
Unless you think SHA-2 is actually weaker than RIPEMD160 somehow, why
would you not use it?
David
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