On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 08:42:33PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > On Fri, 2010-07-09 at 10:23 +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote: > > In theory, collisions happen. In practice, given a cryptographic hash, > > if you can find two different blocks or files that produce the same > > output, please publicise it widely as you have broken that hash function. > > Not necessarily. While you *should* publicize it widely, given all the > possible text that we have, and all the other variants, its > theoretically possibly to get likely. Like winning a lottery where > everyone else has a million tickets, but you only have one. > > Such an occurrence -- if isolated -- would not, IMO, constitute a > 'breaking' of the hash function.
A hash function is broken when we know how to create colliding inputs. A random collision does not a break make, though it might, perhaps, help figure out how to break the hash function later. Nico -- _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
