Nanashi comments on A pair of free information security tools I wrote - LessWrong

17 Post author: Nanashi 11 April 2015 11:03PM

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Comment author: Nanashi 13 April 2015 08:08:53PM *  6 points [-]

I'm downvoting this comment because it's misleading.

First of all, no one has ever found an SHA-2 hash collision yet. Second of all, the chances of two SHA-2 hashes colliding is about 1 in 1 quattuorvigintillion. It's so big I had to look up what the number name was. It's 1 with 77 zeroes after it. We're talking universe-goes-into-heat-death-before-it-happens type odds. Only under the most absurd definition of "quite often" could anyone ever reasonably claim that a cryptographic hash function like SHA-2 "quite often" has collisions.

Comment author: dxu 13 April 2015 08:13:10PM 0 points [-]

It's 1 with 77 zeroes after it.

Not that I disagree with your general point, but... 77 isn't a multiple of 3.

Comment author: Nanashi 13 April 2015 08:18:02PM 1 point [-]

Why does it need to be a multiple of 3?

(SHA-2 = 2^256 = 1*10^77)

Comment author: dxu 13 April 2015 08:22:49PM 3 points [-]

You wrote that the odds were 1 in 1 quattuorvigintillion. I was under the impression that all "-illion"s have exponents that are multiples of 3.

Comment author: Nanashi 13 April 2015 08:25:26PM 3 points [-]

Ahhhh. I misread the output on Wolfram Alpha. You're right. I'll leave it in the original post for posterity, but also for the record, it's actually 1 in 100 quattuorvigintillion

(That's what I get for trying to be dramatic)