SHA1 collision found

[Robert J. Hansen]

> What I always kinda wonder is, why crypto or security experts, at least
> in some sense never seem to learn.

You kidding me?  MD5 hashes are still the standard tool of computer
forensics.  It's appalling.  The reasons why are fascinating, though:
it's largely for judicial reasons, not technical ones.

It took a lot of work to get courts to accept MD5 as a hash algorithm,
but now it's the judicially-approved standard.  So if you're a forensics
nerd who talks about how we need to migrate to SHA256, you can expect
every prosecutor to roll their eyes and say, "not this thing again!"

If you say that MD5 is no longer trusted as a hash, suddenly they get
downright panicked.  "Hush!  Do you want every previous case in which we
used MD5 to certify evidence hadn't been tampered with to come into
question?"