[14777] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Are there...one-way encryption algorithms
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Wagner)
Mon Nov 17 19:24:21 2003
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From: daw@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:21:32 +0000 (UTC)
Reply-To: daw-usenet@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
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Enzo Michelangeli wrote:
>Anyway, the intended use is for primary keys in transaction databases, in
>replacement of the PAN (a.k.a. credit card number). Using secure hashes is
>the usual way of doing such things, but the slight risk of collision,
>although practically negligible, is a bit irksome (especially considering
>that the plaintext is of fixed size, and therefore injectivity is not a
>priori impossible), and I was wondering if something better can be done.
I'd ignore the risk. If you've got a 160-bit hash function
(and you probably should), then the risk of a collision is truly
negligible. If you try to come up with some fancy alternative,
there will be a greater risk that the fancy alternative is insecure
than the risk that you ever experience a collision in SHA.
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