From: Linus Torvalds Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 21:39:33 GMT Subject: Re: [zooko@zooko.com: [Revctrl] colliding md5 hashes of human-meaningful Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20050613210318.18965.qmail@science.horizon.com> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 linux@horizon.com wrote: > > > But perhaps slightly impractical. > > There are just few laws of physics it violates. Yeah, yeah. You avoided a few laws of phsyics of your own. For example, when you say "(With an n-bit hash and an automated way to make harmless changes to source files, I can generate 2^(n/2) variants of each and expect to get a match, even in the absence of a better attack.)" you kind of ignore the fact that "n" here is 160, and so you're going to be searching for quite a few versions of each. Also, you have to compare the sha's of all of those 2**80 versions against each other which is a lot of work in itself. Finally, you have to make sure that al the versions make sense, and that people will take them 100% unmodified. My plan was more interesting, I feel. Linus