On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 12:16:07AM +0000, Jason Cooper wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 01:31:32AM +0100, ankostis wrote:
> > That is why I believe that some HASH (e.g. SHA-3) must be the blessed one.
> > All git >= 3.x.x must support at least this one (for naming and
> > cross-referencing between objects).
> 
> I would stress caution here.  SHA3 has survived the NIST competition,
> but that's about it.  It has *not* received nearly as much scrutiny as
> SHA2.
> 
> SHA2 is a similar construction to SHA1 (Merkle–Damgård [1]) so it makes
> sense to be leery of it, but I would argue it's seasoning merits serious
> consideration.
> 
> Ideally, bless SHA2-384 (minimum) as the next hash.  Five or so years
> down the road, if SHA3 is still in good standing, bless it as the next
> hash.

I don't think we want to be changing hashes that frequently.  Projects
frequently last longer than five years.  I think using a 256-bit hash is
the right choice because it fits on an 80-column screen in hex format.
384-bit hashes do not.  This matters because line wrapping makes
copy-paste hard, and user experience is important.

I've mentioned this on the list earlier, but here are the contenders in
my view:

SHA-256:
  Common, but cryptanalysis has advanced.  Preimage resistance (which is
  even more important than collision resistance) has gotten to 52 of 64
  rounds.  Pseudo-collision attacks are possible against 46 of 64
  rounds.  Slowest option.
SHA-3-256:
  Less common, but has a wide security margin.  Cryptanalysis is
  ongoing, but has not advanced much.  Somewhat to much faster than
  SHA-256, unless you have SHA-256 hardware acceleration (which almost
  nobody does).
BLAKE2b-256:
  Lower security margin, but extremely fast (faster than SHA-1 and even
  MD5).

My recommendation has been for SHA-3-256, because I think it provides
the best tradeoff between security and performance.
-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 832 623 2791 | https://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204