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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Is calculating a hash code for a large file in parallel less secure than doing it sequentially?
I would like to improve the performance of hashing large files, say for example in the tens of gigabytes in size.
Normally, you sequentially hash the bytes of the files using a hash function (say, ...
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How can I improve a password generation scheme based on a shared secret and URL?
I currently use the following method to generate a different password on every website I have to login:
password = SHA1 ( mainPassword . domainName . number )
...
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iSeries (AS/400) Database File: password encryption
I am helping with a project in which an old software system on an iSeries is having a brand new .NET UI applied to it. It's going well... except...
In order to allow users to login and maintain ...
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Is SHA-512 bijective when hashing a single 512-bit block?
It's been said that CRC-64 is bijective for a 64-bit block.
It the corresponding statement true for SHA-2?
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Reverse engineering a hash?
I understand this may not be the best place to ask a question like this, but I believe that this community may be the best/only place I can ask such a question.
I have inputs and outputs from an ...
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What alphanumeric string length can be used to guarantee no hash collisions from CRC-64?
If I'm hashing alphanumeric strings (chars in the set 0-9, a-...
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Properties of PRNG / Hashes
There are a lot of quite elaborate PRNG's out there (e.g. Mersenne Twister et.al.), and they have some important properties, especially when it comes to crypto applications.
So, I was wondering how ...
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Guarding against cryptanalytic breakthroughs: combining multiple hash functions
Assume I want to design a protocol (or data format or similar) including some cryptographic hash, and want it to be as future-proof as possible, i.e. I want to avoid that breakthroughs in cryptography ...
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Change in probability of collision when removing digits from MD5 hexadecimal hash values
I am aware that MD5 has a known collision vulnerability and should not be relied upon when uniqueness is required, but in the environment I am working on I only have access to MD5 hash function. ...
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Should I use the first or last bits from a sha-256 hash?
I have the need for a hexadecimal token that is smaller than the normal length of the hexadecimal representation of a sha-256 hash.
Should I take the first bits or the last bits? Which of them ...
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1answer
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Can one efficiently iterate valid bcrypt hash output values?
bcrypt is an intentionally slow hash algorithm. In my last protocol idea, I wanted to use it to expand a password and then only transfer the bcrypt-hashed password.
An efficient attack on this would ...
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Why does PBKDF2 xor the iterations of the hash function together?
The definition of PBKDF2 states that I obtain a derived key* by calling a pseudorandom function a bunch of times recursively:
...
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Is using slow password hashing on the client side easier attackable than on the server side?
As we know, one should use a slow password hashing algorithm instead of a fast one for storing passwords, to hinder brute force attacks when the database is compromised. The problem with this is that ...
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Is it feasible to build a stream cipher from a cryptographic hash function?
A few years ago I devised a symmetric-key system that worked like so:
...
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Necessity of Randomness of Salts?
Given the desire to have unique salts for each user of your system, is it actually necessary to create a cryptographically-random salt for each user? If your system already has some other unique user ...
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2answers
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What makes a hash function good for password hashing?
Using a cryptographic hash to store e.g. passwords in a database is considered good practice (as opposed to storing them plaintext), but is subject to attacks on said cryptographic hash, assuming the ...
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How can a random salt for a hash function work in practice?
I understand the theory behind the use salts in hash functions, but when I see it implemented, the implementations always generate the salt on the fly and the salt appears to be different for every ...
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What is the general justification for the hardness of finding preimages for cryptographic hash functions?
Since most cryptographic hash functions are simple, compact constructions does this simplicity impose a limit on the complexity and the size of a function that can generate preimages? That is, given a ...
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Why do we append the length of the message in SHA-1 pre-processing?
As we know, SHA-1 is irreversible, so why do we append the length of the message to the preimage?
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Can a proof be constructed to show there is no distinguisher?
Let's assume a simple algorithm like the Skein hash function.
Is it possible, given the algorithm, to construct a proof that it does not have a particular distinguisher, something like:
$P(xyz)$ is ...
