SPTH
Electrical Ordered Freedom EOF #1
January 2007
A hash function (or hash algorithm) is a way of creating a small digital "fingerprint" from any kind of data. You can neighter find the original fingerprinted string nor create a new string with the same checksum (without a great effort). Beside of rainbow-lists, bruteforce is the only way to find out what the checksum stands for. Bruteforce uses more time, the longer the fingerprinted data is. If hash functions will be used in viruses for encryption, antivirus programms would have to use a bruteforce attack to find the real virus code. As bruteforce requires much time, and less scanning time is essential for antivirus-programs, hash-encryption might be a useful weapon against antivirus programs.