SHA-1 cracked

Beansprout · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:07

http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-1-11/50336.html

"On the day that I cracked SHA-1, I went out to eat. I was very excited. I knew I was the only person who knew this world-class secret."

Just watched A Beautiful Mind - quite fitting to see some brilliant maths on the news

At least - it sounds brilliant - no reason to assume it's not real given her history.

Craig321 · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:10

Argh, now I have to re-code part of my registration script

Man I'd love to be that good at maths

Beansprout · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:11

Add salt, it tastes good

Craig321 · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:13

Beansprout said:
Add salt, it tastes good

Got salt on it

The script isn't as safe as it used to be though

Inquisitor · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:26

Craig321 said:
Got salt on it

The script isn't as safe as it used to be though

If it's salted then it doesn't matter if collisions can be computed for the hashing algorithm

Craig321 · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:54

Inquisitor said:
If it's salted then it doesn't matter if collisions can be computed for the hashing algorithm

Ah, good good

blighter · 21 Jan 2007 at 01:57

Inquisitor said:
If it's salted then it doesn't matter if collisions can be computed for the hashing algorithm

but at the moment it's chipped

/runs to nearest exit

yer_averagejoe · 21 Jan 2007 at 04:40

Amazing. I've not seen a beautiful mind, I'll have to find it.

"Wang"

*crawls back to GD*

punky_munky · 21 Jan 2007 at 09:45

Wow, she is freakin' genius.

It's still safe to use current methods though isn't it?

Una · 21 Jan 2007 at 10:05

Edit: Nm.

socreative · 21 Jan 2007 at 10:19

well done lady! Math rules! I used to be a real guru before.. time has passed though and i forgot quite a few things now

P.S. "Beautiful Mind" isn't that great actually. it's only about supply and demand really

Sic · 21 Jan 2007 at 15:33

fair play to her, that's impressive. she'll have to work a bit harder to break my password thinger (thanks to rob

)

Beansprout · 21 Jan 2007 at 15:46

socreative said:
P.S. "Beautiful Mind" isn't that great actually. it's only about supply and demand really

arty · 21 Jan 2007 at 15:57

What exactly is there to 'crack' about a hashing algorithm? In addition, in what way does SHA-1 'include' MD5?

Before Professor Wang cracked it, the MD5 could only be deciphered by today's fastest supercomputer running codes for more than a million years.

'Deciphered'? :confused:

I'm sure she is a very clever lady, but that article is pretty poor. There is no way to reverse-engineer a hash, by definition. Similarly, collisions will always exist as a result of hashing; the measure of the quality of a hashing algorithm is largely how rarely these collisions occur. If she had found a perfect way to alter the source data yet preserve its hash (as others have claimed to do) I'd be more impressed. If the alteration of the source data was humanly-undetectable, particularly in raw text format, I'd be even more impressed

arty

socreative · 21 Jan 2007 at 16:12

Beansprout said:

watch the movie... what "Russell Crowe" has invented there is used and studied in any economical college. It's about how "supply" is proportionally dependant from "demand"...

Math rules anyway!

Beansprout · 21 Jan 2007 at 16:15

socreative said:
watch the movie... what "Russell Crowe" has invented there is used and studied in any economical college. It's about how "supply" is proportionally dependant from "demand"...

Math rules anyway!

Ooh, you mean that

It's neat stuff

Una · 21 Jan 2007 at 16:39

arty said:
What exactly is there to 'crack' about a hashing algorithm? In addition, in what way does SHA-1 'include' MD5?

'Deciphered'?

I'm sure she is a very clever lady, but that article is pretty poor. There is no way to reverse-engineer a hash, by definition. Similarly, collisions will always exist as a result of hashing; the measure of the quality of a hashing algorithm is largely how rarely these collisions occur. If she had found a perfect way to alter the source data yet preserve its hash (as others have claimed to do) I'd be more impressed. If the alteration of the source data was humanly-undetectable, particularly in raw text format, I'd be even more impressed

arty

Indeed that article is very badly written. I read an interesting paper about hash collisions recently.

http://www.doxpara.com/research/md5/md5_someday.pdf

Just shows what is possible,

alex@enigma:~$ curl http://www.doxpara.com/t1.html | md5sum
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 40737 100 40737 0 0 29099 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 --:--:-- 53414
c0f3adb824590b40944614268e627421 -

alex@enigma:~$ curl http://www.doxpara.com/t2.html | md5sum
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 40737 100 40737 0 0 9483 0 0:00:04 0:00:04 --:--:-- 51005
c0f3adb824590b40944614268e627421 -

Notice the same md5sum's for two totally different webpages.

Sic · 21 Jan 2007 at 17:21

socreative said:
watch the movie... what "Russell Crowe" has invented there is used and studied in any economical college. It's about how "supply" is proportionally dependant from "demand"...

Math rules anyway!

yes, but at the time it wasn't considered to apply it to real life. can't remember off the top of my head when it was set, but at the time, the guy was considered brilliant, and quite rightly. i believe it's based on actual events, isn't it?

Berserker · 22 Jan 2007 at 00:47

Why has it taken a year and a half to write that report? And what does an old version of Lloyds TSB's website (in the pic) have to do with anything?

Ha! I recently wrote some software that used cryptographic checksums. I bypassed all these weakling algorithms and went straight for SHA-2.

I expect it to be cracked this year.

Dj_Jestar · 22 Jan 2007 at 01:42

and to put all of this into context, and to erradicate the tin-foil hat wearing brigade..

All that achieving "cracking" an algorithm means, is that you can compute the input faster than via brute force.

For example: brute forcing an MD5 would take, if that article could hold water, "millions of years"

"Method A" only takes 999,999years.. OMG MD5 CRACKED!!

This isn't a hollywood movie.. they can't instantly gain access by repeatedly pressing the A, S, D and J, K, L keys.