Schneier on the SHA break
Posted on August 24, 2004
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 55 views |
Bruce Schneier expounds upon the signifigance of last week’s announcement that collisions had been found for a variant of MD5 last week in Opinion: Cryptanalysis of MD5 and SHA: Time for a new standard:
The magnitude of these results depends on who you are. If you’re a cryptographer, this is a huge deal. While not revolutionary, these results are substantial advances in the field. The techniques described by the researchers are likely to have other applications, and we’ll be better able to design secure systems as a result. This is how the science of cryptography advances: We learn how to design new algorithms by breaking other algorithms. In addition, algorithms from the NSA are considered a sort of alien technology: They come from a superior race with no explanations. Any successful cryptanalysis against an NSA algorithm is an interesting data point in the eternal question of how good they really are in there.
(For the backstory see here.)