There’s a big difference between violating a cryptographic function and experimenting with how we structure brute-force attempts over limited key ranges (like 69–71 bits).
SHA256 is designed (and proven) to have the following property :
The only way to acquire any info about SHA256(x) is to compute SHA256(x) Finding ANY way to get ANY info about SHA256(x) without computing SHA256(x) would means the algorithm's cryptographic properties are broken.
This includes this statistical prefix theory, which tells you it's possible to optimize or structure a search for SHA256(x) by computing the SHA256 of other "nearby" values.
Strategies like Kangaroo and BSGS don’t contradict SHA-256 either, yet they’re widely used to reduce computational load. Prefix approaches follow a similar mindset—not to break cryptography, but to shave off time and cycles where possible.
Of course they don't contradict SHA256 - because it's not used in those methods which rely only on public keys.
And guess what, the very reason they work is that because unlike SHA256, there actually IS a link between nearby keys on the eliptic curve.
You’re quoting cryptographers “10 leagues above anyone here”,, fair enough. But those same cryptographers also encourage experimentation.
Of course they would, just like any scientist. They would encourage rigorous scientific experimentation. Sadly, that's not what we're doing here. We're not on a science thread but on a script kiddies one.
People dont have the basics, and instead of being humble and learn from knowledgeable people, they shit on them.