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Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

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11–20 of 51 posts

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#11
I see that you ran out of particle names for your projects. May I introduce you to super-symmetry, then?

What's the issue with picking names that do not exist already? It has got the upside that millions of webpages will not appear in the results when people are searching for your project's name.

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#12

> The default S-box > This was obtained from random.org by requesting 8,192 random bytes, as were all S-boxes tested so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing-up-my-sleeve_number

It should probably just default the s-box to all zeroes or some other method of deriving it ex-nihilo, but a default is practical just so you don't need to synchronize s-boxes between uses.

I would imagine anyone interested in using this for serious business™ would start with a new s-box hierarchy.

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#14
I'm confused. Supercop is a benchmark for cryptographic hash functions, but SMHasher is a test for non-cryptographic hash functions. The use cases list cryptography, but also universal hash functions which are generally not crypto-grade. It compares itself to the SHA hashes, but only has 64 bit output.

Is Beamsplitter supposed to be cryptography grade or not?

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been far better to select numbers generated by the NIST Randomness Beacon https://beacon.nist.gov/home And whilst you can sort of selectively choose which values to take from the beacon, it should reduce the ability to add a backdoor.

There are plenty of digits in pi. If the hash is secure independent of s-box selection, I'd much rather bet on pi being normal than "the NIST beacon values aren't generated by AES in CTR mode" ;-)

> There are plenty of digits in pi.

Yes, but

"These fears can be allayed by using numbers created in a way that leaves little room for adjustment. An example would be the use of initial digits from the number π as the constants. Using digits of π millions of places after the decimal point would not be considered trustworthy because the algorithm designer might have selected that starting point because it created a secret weakness the designer could later exploit."

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#19
post #13

I should warn any reader not to use this or any other novel cryptographic algorithm in production. Don't use anything crypto in production until it has been very heavily analyzed for years by professional cryptographers.

This.

If you want me to use your hash function, show me 2-3 independent analyses from independent researchers.

Re: Show HN: Beamsplitter – a new possibly universal hash

#20
The source is using `.cpp`, though it does not appear to be using any C++ features.

Would it be reasonable to move to `.c` so that it can be integrated in all sorts of things?

Aside, when something is Apache licensed, and someone wants to make, say an Erlang NIF with something, what effects does that embedding have on the NIF library and users of the NIF library?

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