A cryptographic hash algorithm is a function which takes a variable size input and produces a fixed size output. The algorithm makes it difficult to predict the output for a given input, find two inputs with the same output, or reconstruct the input from the output.
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Applying multiple hash functions to improve security? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions
I'm a total newb to cryptography but after reading what I've read about it, I had a ...
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OpenPGP Signature Packet hashed data
RFC 4880 describes the version 4 signature packet, tag 2, as
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Which MACs can be converted into a secure unkeyed hash function?
It is known that setting the secret key to a fixed, public value does not make MACs like CBC-MAC or GMAC into secure unkeyed cryptographic hash functions that could be used - for instance - for ...
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Do Cryptographic Hashing Algorithms operate only on Integers?
Do all the Cryptographic hashing algorithms operate only on integers (32 bit or 64 bit)? Is there any operation performed on Floating Point Numbers as well?
The reason I ask this is because I read ...
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Memory-hard operations in work-factor hash functions
I'm playing around with work-factor hash functions, and I'm looking for a memory-hard operation to make it resistant to GPU / parallel hardware attacks. I considered a very large (i.e. 64K) s-box that ...
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Is every output of a hash function possible?
Is every output of a hash function (e.g. SHA1, MD5, etc) guaranteed to be possible, or, conversely, are there any output values that cannot possibly be created from any input? If so, what guarantees ...
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Attacks of the MAC construction $\mathcal{H}(m||k)$ for common hashes $\mathcal{H}$?
Consider a common practically-collision-resistant Merkle–Damgård hash function $\mathcal{H}$ (e.g. SHA-1, RIPEMD-160, SHA-256, SHA-512). We define a Message Authentication Code $\mathcal{C}$
$$(k,m) ...
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Hash decrypts key, key decrypts cipher… why?
I noticed recently that a couple of pieces of encryption software (TrueCrypt being one of them) don't directly use a hash of the password as the key for the block cipher. Instead, they generate a ...
