Re: Hash algorithm analysis

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Jul 20, 2018, 21:52 UTC
Message-ID: <20180720215220.GB18502@genre.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <20180611192942.GC20665@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>

On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 12:29:42PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> My understanding of the discussion so far:
> 
> Keccak team encourages us[1] to consider a variant like K12 instead of
> SHA3.
> 
> AGL explains[2] that the algorithms considered all seem like
> reasonable choices and we should decide using factors like
> implementation ease and performance.
> 
> If we choose a Keccak-based function, AGL also[3] encourages using a
> variant like K12 instead of SHA3.
> 
> Dscho strongly prefers[4] SHA-256, because of
> - wide implementation availability, including in future hardware
> - has been widely analyzed
> - is fast
> 
> Yves Orton and Linus Torvalds prefer[5] SHA3 over SHA2 because of how
> it is constructed.

I know this discussion has sort of petered out, but I'd like to see if we can revive it. I'm writing index v3 and having a decision would help me write tests for it.

To summarize the discussion that's been had in addition to the above, Ævar has also stated a preference for SHA-256 and I would prefer BLAKE2b over SHA-256 over SHA3-256, although any of them would be fine.

Are there other contributors who have a strong opinion? Are there things I can do to help us coalesce around an option?

-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204