Re: RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Jason,

On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Jason Cooper wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 08:45:35PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Sep 2017, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 6:43 AM, demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > SHA3 however uses a completely different design where it mixes a 1088
> > > > bit block into a 1600 bit state, for a leverage of 2:3, and the excess
> > > > is *preserved between each block*.
> > > 
> > > Yes. And considering that the SHA1 attack was actually predicated on
> > > the fact that each block was independent (no extra state between), I
> > > do think SHA3 is a better model.
> > > 
> > > So I'd rather see SHA3-256 than SHA256.
> 
> Well, for what it's worth, we need to be aware that SHA3 is *different*.
> In crypto, "different" = "bugs haven't been found yet".  :-P
> 
> And SHA2 is *known*.  So we have a pretty good handle on how it'll
> weaken over time.

Here, you seem to agree with me.

> > SHA-256 got much more cryptanalysis than SHA3-256, and apart from the
> > length-extension problem that does not affect Git's usage, there are no
> > known weaknesses so far.
> 
> While I think that statement is true on it's face (particularly when
> including post-competition analysis), I don't think it's sufficient
> justification to chose one over the other.

And here you don't.

I find that very confusing.

> > It would seem that the experts I talked to were much more concerned about
> > that amount of attention than the particulars of the algorithm. My
> > impression was that the new features of SHA3 were less studied than the
> > well-known features of SHA2, and that the new-ness of SHA3 is not
> > necessarily a good thing.
> 
> The only thing I really object to here is the abstract "experts".  We're
> talking about cryptography and integrity here.  It's no longer
> sufficient to cite anonymous experts.  Either they can put their
> thoughts, opinions and analysis on record here, or it shouldn't be
> considered.  Sorry.

Sorry, you are asking cryptography experts to spend their time on the Git
mailing list. I tried to get them to speak out on the Git mailing list.
They respectfully declined.

I can't fault them, they have real jobs to do, and none of their managers
would be happy for them to educate the Git mailing list on matters of
cryptography, not after what happened in 2005.

> Other than their anonymity, though, I do agree with your experts
> assessments.

I know what our in-house cryptography experts have to prove to start
working at Microsoft. Forgive me, but you are not a known entity to me.

> However, whether we chose SHA2 or SHA3 doesn't matter.

To you, it does not matter.

To me, it matters. To the several thousand developers working on Windows,
probably the largest Git repository in active use, it matters. It matters
because the speed difference that has little impact on you has a lot more
impact on us.

> Moving away from SHA1 does.  Once the object_id code is in place to
> facilitate that transition, the problem is solved from git's
> perspective.

Uh oh. You forgot the mapping. And the protocol. And pretty much
everything except the oid.

> If SHA3 is chosen as the successor, it's going to get a *lot* more
> adoption, and thus, a lot more analysis.  If cracks start to show, the
> hard work of making git flexible is already done.  We can migrate to
> SHA4/5/whatever in an orderly fashion with far less effort than the
> transition away from SHA1.

Sure. And if XYZ789 is chosen, it's going to get a *lot* more adoption,
too.

We think.

Let's be realistic. Git is pretty important to us, but it is not important
enough to sway, say, Intel into announcing hardware support for SHA3.

And if you try to force through *any* hash function only so that it gets
more adoption and hence more support, in the short run you will make life
harder for developers on more obscure platforms, who may not easily get
high-quality, high-speed implementations of anything but the very
mainstream (which is, let's face it, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256). I know I
would have cursed you for such a decision back when I had to work on AIX
and IRIX.

> For my use cases, as a user of git, I have a plan to maintain provable
> integrity of existing objects stored in git under sha1 while migrating
> away from sha1.  The same plan works for migrating away from SHA2 or
> SHA3 when the time comes.

Please do not make the mistake of taking your use case to be a template
for everybody's use case.

Migrating a large team away from any hash function to another one *will*
be painful, and costly.

Migrating will be very costly for hosting companies like GitHub, Microsoft
and BitBucket, too.

Ciao,
Johannes