Re: [Firebird-devel] crypt plugins

[Edward F. <ed...@cd...>]

Mark O'Donohue wrote:
>> Cryptanalysis of the MD4 family of hash functions has proceeded in 
>> fits and starts over the last decade or so, with results against 
>> simplified versions of the algorithms and partial results against the
>>  whole algorithms. This year, Eli Biham and Rafi Chen, and separately
>>  Antoine Joux, announced some pretty impressive cryptographic results
>>  against MD5 and SHA. Collisions have been demonstrated in SHA. And 
>> there are rumors, unconfirmed at this writing, of results against SHA-1.
> 
> Actually the real news was, that SHA-1 may be as unsafe as MD5.

Just so everyone knows: any function (hash or otherwise) which outputs 
fewer bits than it takes in WILL ALWAYS HAVE COLLISIONS.  This is 
expected, and well known.  Security vulnerabilities in hashes only arise 
when a method of reversing a hash become pheasible.