Re: Question about hashing algorithms

>Are any hashing algorithms that are secure for short data and have
>short signatures? As I understand it, SHA-1, MD5, etc. were pretty
>much designed to work for any size of data. Sometimes that seems like
>overkill, though.

What's wrong with overkill? (a serious question)

>If I have small bits of data (say, a few kilobytes
>or so) and I want to verify each chunk with a hash, it seems a little
>wasteful to require a 160 bit hash that matches up with what might only
>be 2K of data most of the time.

I had trouble understanding this. Could you try re-phrasing?
What are you trying to optimize?

Have you tried using SHA-1 and actually measuring the performance
to see if it is adequate? If not, you might want to try a standard
hash first. Premature optimization is the root of all evil, and
all that...
Received on Thu Sep 29 21:50:59 2005