In cryptography, a collision attack on a cryptographic hash tries to find two arbitrary inputs that will produce the same hash value, i.e. a hash collision. In contrast to a preimage attack, neither the hash value nor one of the inputs is specified.
There are roughly two types of collision attacks:
- Collision attack
- Find two arbitrary different messages m1 and m2 such that hash(m1) = hash(m2).
- Chosen-prefix collision attack
- Given two different prefixes p1, p2 find two appendages m1 and m2 such that hash(p1 ∥ m1) = hash(p2 ∥ m2) (where ∥ is the concatenation operation).
Read more about Collision Attack: Classical Collision Attack, Chosen-prefix Collision Attack, Attack Scenarios
Famous quotes containing the words collision and/or attack:
“When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane’s rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.”
—Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)