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Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

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Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#82

Please, do not use b6133fd6-70fe-4fe3-bed6-8ca8fc9386cd, I checked my database and I was using it already.

I always thought generating UUIDs at random was insane. I now only use LLMs. The prompt is: "generate a UUID. Make sure no one ever used it anywhere in their code or database. Check your work and think hard about each step. Do not output any reasoning or plain English, only th UUID itself". You're welcome.

Actually asking ChatGPT this query led it giving me this UUID "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000" which happens to be a very common example UUID

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#83
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pffft - they didn't need to store the whole UUID, just a hash. Dummies.

They thought of that, but they were still working on hiring a team to maintain the hashing microservice.

Hashing microservice deployment was blocked by random generator microservice stuck in Pending because it needed an UUID from UUID microservice which was blocked by hashing.

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#84
post #73

Funny story no one will believe, but it’s true. A good friend of mine joined a startup as CTO 10 years ago, high growth phase, maybe 200 devs… In his first week he discovered the company had a microservice for generating new UUIDs. One endpoint with its own dedicated team of 3 engineers …including a database guy (the plot thickens). Other teams were instructed to call this service every time they needed a new ‘safe’…

Pffft - they didn't need to store the whole UUID, just a hash. Dummies.

already laughing from parent comment this is well done

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#85

What you're talking about is so extremely rare that it's much more likely that the entire Earth is destroyed by an asteroid right this inst...

For a single database using UUIDs, yes, it's astronomically rare. But it's quite a different thing to say that no computer system on Earth has ever experienced a UUID collision. The number of systems out there is also astronomical.

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#88

What you're talking about is so extremely rare that it's much more likely that the entire Earth is destroyed by an asteroid right this inst...

For a single database using UUIDs, yes, it's astronomically rare. But it's quite a different thing to say that no computer system on Earth has ever experienced a UUID collision. The number of systems out there is also astronomical.

>The number of systems out there is also astronomical.

Not even close

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#89
post #60

According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there's bound to be one branch of universe where every UUID is the same. Can you imagine what those guys are thinking?

"Huh, this is just an identity function. Cool. Let's move on."

Re: Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...

#90
Most plausible cause: uuid package depends on some random number generator package, which has recently been compromised in order to make “random” numbers predictable. As a result, many crypto (ssl + currency) projects are compromised due to a supplychain attack.
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