17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Phil Karn says:
Well, I suppose this demonstrates that the NSA knew what they were doing when they set the SHA's length to 160 bits. Let it never be said that they aren't right on top of everything...
On the other hand, I can't imagine that NSA is unaware that strong cryptographic hash functions designed for authentication are also useful building blocks for a confidentiality cipher. Which might make them less than wholly enthusiastic about doing their best on a public standard like SHA.
True enough. However, we don't have a lot of alternatives right now. MD6, anyone? .pm