Cryptography/Hashes
Information security often includes situations where a user wants to transform one block of information into another block of information in such a way that the original block can not be recreated. It is also required that every time the input block is processed, it will produce the same output block. This means that the process is deterministic.
Such processes behave similar to a hash function and so are typically called cryptographic hashes. These hashes are used in serving authentication and integrity goals of cryptography. A cryptographic hash can be described as and has property that the hash function is one way. A given hash value can not feasibly be reversed to get a message that produces that hash value. I.e. There is no useful inverse hash function
This property can be formally expanded to provide the following properties of a secure hash:
- Preimage resistant : Given H it should be hard to find M such that H = hash(M).
- Second preimage resistant: Given an input m1, it should be hard to find another input, m2 (not equal to m1) such that hash(m1) = hash(m2).
- Collision-resistant: it should be hard to find two different messages m1 and m2 such that hash(m1) = hash(m2). Because of the birthday paradox this means the hash function must have a larger image than is required for preimage-resistance.
Applications of hash functions
A typical use of a cryptographic hash would be as follows: Alice poses to Bob a tough math problem and claims she has solved it. Bob would like to try it himself, but would yet like to be sure that Alice is not bluffing. Therefore, Alice writes down her solution, appends a random nonce, computes its hash and tells Bob the hash value (whilst keeping the solution secret). This way, when Bob comes up with the solution himself a few days later, Alice can verify his solution but still be able to prove that she had the solution earlier.
In actual practice, Alice and Bob will often be computer programs, and the secret would be something less easily spoofed than a claimed puzzle solution. The above application is called a commitment scheme. Another important application of secure hashes is verification of message integrity. Determination of whether or not any changes have been made to a message (or a file), for example, can be accomplished by comparing message digests calculated before, and after, transmission (or any other event) (see Tripwire, a system using this property as a defense against malware and malfeasance). A message digest can also serve as a means of reliably identifying a file. A related application is password verification. Passwords are usually not stored in cleartext, for obvious reasons, but instead in digest form. To authenticate a user, the password presented by the user is hashed and compared with the stored hash.
For both security and performance reasons, most digital signature algorithms specify that only the digest of the message be "signed", not the entire message. Hash functions can also be used in the generation of pseudorandom bits.
SHA-1, MD5, and RIPEMD-160 are among the most commonly-used message digest algorithms as of 2004. In August 2004, researchers found weaknesses in a number of hash functions, including MD5, SHA-0 and RIPEMD. This has called into question the long-term security of later algorithms which are derived from these hash functions. In particular, SHA-1 (a strengthened version of SHA-0), RIPEMD-128 and RIPEMD-160 (strengthened versions of RIPEMD). Neither SHA-0 nor RIPEMD are widely used since they were replaced by their strengthened versions.