13 questions linked to/from "Weaknesses" in SHA-256d?
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### Any weakness when performing SHA-256 repeatedly? [duplicate]

Is it significantly easier to reverse a SHA-256 hash if you know that the input was a 32 byte output of SHA-256? I assume for most outputs of SHA-256 there will be zero, one or two possible 32 byte ...
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### What is the “Random Oracle Model” and why is it controversial?

What is the "Random Oracle Model"? Is it an "assumption" akin to the hardness of factoring and discrete log? Or something else? And why do some researchers have a strong distrust of this model?
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### Why hashing twice?

I'm trying to understand the Bitcoin protocol, and sometimes see instructions like this: The TransactionId is defined by SHA256(SHA256(txbytes)) or The hash of the public key is generated by ...
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### At the current time, is SHA256 the de facto standard for strong cryptographic hashes?

At the current time, is SHA256 the de facto standard for strong cryptographic hashes? From what I am seeing of more sites utilizing it, I would suppose the answer to this is yes, but would like to ...
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### Why does HMAC use two different keys?

Suppose $H$ is a hash function; why is $$H(k\mathbin\|H(k\mathbin\|m))$$ not secure? See this HMAC definition. In there, indeed two keys are used and the mac algorithm is H(k_1\mathbin\|H(k_2\...
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### How to to calculate the hash of an unordered set

Suppose I have a set of elements, with known hash (e.g. SHA-2). How can I calculate the hash of the set? With it I mean an unordered set, so the order of elements is undefined and shall not play any ...
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### Can iterated hashing be used to mitigate collision and preimage weaknesses?

How much security does double hashing add regarding collisions and preimages? Is it helpful to iterate a hash function even more times than two? For example, can MD5 be fixed (in practice) by ...