Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | Date | Thu, 14 Aug 2003 21:21:16 -0500 | From | Matt Mackall <> | Subject | Re: [RFC][PATCH] Make cryptoapi non-optional? |
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On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 01:45:45AM +0000, David Wagner wrote: > Val Henson wrote: > >On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 07:40:25PM +0000, David Wagner wrote: > >> I don't see where you are getting this from. Define > >> F(x) = first80bits(SHA(x)) > >> G(x) = first80bits(SHA(x)) xor last80bits(SHA(x)). > >> What makes you think that F is a better (or worse) hash function than G? > > > >See Matt Mackall's earlier post on correlation, excerpted at the end > >of this message. Basically, with two strings x and y, the entropy of > >x alone or y alone is always greater than or equal to the entropy of x > >xored with y. > > > >entropy(x) >= entropy(x xor y) > >entropy(y) >= entropy(x xor y) > > Sorry; that's not accurate. Here's a counterexample. Let x and y be > two 80-bit strings. Assume that x is either 0 or 1 (equal probability > for both possibilities). Assume y is either 0 or 2 (equal probability > for both possibilities), and is independent of x. Then > entropy(x) = 1 bit > entropy(y) = 1 bit > entropy(x xor y) = 2 bits
Indeed. But here we're already assuming the entropy of x and y are approximately the same as their size.
> The difference between F and G is very small, and there is not much > basis for choosing one over the other.
The debate is really about the merits of F vs the original hash, and it only came up because I had taken out the folding when trying to benchmark $subject. My current code gets around that whole debate by using F for /dev/random and (almost all of) the original hash for /dev/urandom so we have both paranoid and fast. Now can we please discuss the merits of $subject?
See this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=jW3A.6xq.3%40gated-at.bofh.it&rnum=1
-- Matt Mackall : http://www.selenic.com : of or relating to the moon - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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