Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Final word: SHA256 not "hacked", collisions, preimage resistance, cluesticks
by
kjj
on 22/06/2011, 15:32:56 UTC
It won't be broken in a way useful for forging bitcoin transactions any time this decade, and probably not this century or the next...
Feeling bold, eh? Think what computers existed a decade ago. Then think what computers existed a century ago. Also progress does not slow down, it accelerates.

Progress won't help.

There are roughly as many possible SHA256 hashes possible as there are particles in the universe.  It would take a computer the size a galaxy a very long time to brute force a collision.

It would take a serious overturning of a large portion of our knowledge of discrete algebra to break SHA256.  Could happen, but is generally considered to be unlikely in the near future.