> Nonsense. The only way we know to make a secure hash table function is either via universal hashing (academic literature). This is my point. A universal hash

> Nonsense. The only way we know to make a secure hash table function is either via universal hashing (academic literature). This is my point. A universal hash function is a random distribution over deterministic functions. You can always create a single deterministic function with a seed in such a way, that it acts as drawing a random function from a distribution. I don't know that siphash is universal, certainly not all seeded functions are. Perhaps that's your point. I'm just saying that using randomness is the only way to create universality. Actually the Aumasson, Bernstein paper http://cr.yp.to/siphash/siphash-20120918.pdf http://cr.yp.to/siphash/siphash-20120918.pdf has some interesting considerations on timing attacks against universal hash functions.