Scribd
Upload
58 views

Cryptographic Hash Functions

This document provides an introduction to cryptography and cryptocurrencies. It discusses cryptographic hash functions, their properties of collision resistance, hiding, and puzzle-friendliness. Popular hash functions like MD5 are mentioned, though MD5 is no longer recommended due to discovered collisions. Cryptocurrencies use cryptography and decentralized systems to record transactions without a central authority.

Uploaded by

Kaushik Gupta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
58 views

Cryptographic Hash Functions

This document provides an introduction to cryptography and cryptocurrencies. It discusses cryptographic hash functions, their properties of collision resistance, hiding, and puzzle-friendliness. Popular hash functions like MD5 are mentioned, though MD5 is no longer recommended due to discovered collisions. Cryptocurrencies use cryptography and decentralized systems to record transactions without a central authority.

Uploaded by

Kaushik Gupta
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 11

Module 1 Introduction to Cryptography &

Cryptocurrencies
Cryptographic Hash Functions, Hash Pointers and Data Structures, Digital Signatures, Public Keys as Identities, A
Simple Cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency
• Cryptocurrency, sometimes called crypto-currency or crypto,
is any form of currency that exists digitally or virtually and
uses cryptography to secure transactions.
• Cryptocurrencies don't have a central issuing or regulating
authority, instead using a decentralized system to record
transactions and issue new units.
Cryptographic Hash Functions
hash function is a mathematical function with the following three properties:
• Its input can be any string of any size.
• It produces a fixed size output.
• It is efficiently computable.
• computing the hash of an n ‐bit string should have a running time that is O( n ).
For a hash function to be cryptographically secure, we’re going to require that it has the following three
additional properties:
(1) collision‐resistance,
(2) hiding,
(3) puzzle‐friendliness.
Property 1
• Collision‐resistance: A hash function H is said to be collision resistant if it is infeasible to find two
values, x and y , such that x ≠ y , yet H(x) = H(y) .
Message Digest (MD) – Popular Hash Function
• The MD family comprises of hash functions MD2, MD4, MD5 and MD6. It was adopted as Internet
Standard RFC 1321. It is a 128-bit hash function.

• MD5 digests have been widely used in the software world to provide assurance about integrity of
transferred file.

• For example, file servers often provide a pre-computed MD5 checksum for the files, so that a user
can compare the checksum of the downloaded file to it.

• In 2004, collisions were found in MD5. An analytical attack was reported to be successful only in
an hour by using computer cluster. This collision attack resulted in compromised MD5 and hence it
is no longer recommended for use.
Property 2 - Hiding
• The hiding property asserts that if we’re given the output of the hash function y = H(x) , there’s no feasible
way to figure out what the input, x , was.
• Hiding. A hash function H is hiding if: when a secret value r is chosen from a probability distribution that has
high min‐entropy , then given H(r ‖ x) it is infeasible to find x .
• In information‐theory, min‐entropy is a measure of how predictable an outcome is, and high min‐entropy
captures the intuitive idea that the distribution (i.e., random variable) is very spread out.
Property 3

A hash function H is said to be puzzle-friendly if for every possible n-bit output value y , if k is
chosen from a distribution with high entropy, then it is infeasible to find x such that H(k ‖ x) = y in
time significantly less than 2^n. Puzzle friendliness seems to be a more detailed description of
hiding.
Thank You

You might also like