IBM to Provide Security w/o Sacrificing Privacy Using Hash Functions

Michael B. Trausch fd0man at gmail.com
Wed May 25 09:22:43 CEST 2005


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Sean C. wrote:
> 
> I'm confused though.
> I just read this article from the New York Times. As a newbie to encryption and
> hash algorithms I thought the idea behind hashes was that you couldn't
> reconstruct the data from the hash.
> 

You can't, but if you have matching data, the hash will match.  For example:

List A:
	- Item 234	sample hash: asdfsdd
	- Bubble 332	sample hash: ef2342h
	- Wonky 093	sample hash: 23jasld

List B:
	- Item 324	sample hash: eja8357
	- Silly 325	sample hash: aj3hht5
	- Item 234	sample hash: asdfsdd

That would be the "match", then they can ask for the data behind the
match to be revealed.

- --
Michael B. Trausch                               <fd0man at gmail.com>
Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/     Jabber: mtrausch at jabber.com
Phone: +1-(678)-522-7934              FAX (US Only): 1-866-806-4647
===================================================================
Do you have PGP or GPG?  Key at pgp.mit.edu, Please Encrypt E-Mail!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFClCfDPXInbkqM7nwRAyCtAJ9HVOy087Fsk+ZU3BBbqEu4XtkGTQCbB/kt
bL7t6HAeYG73GwwweHB0sMo=
=h0H5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list