3 ms·

FWIW, the first warnings that SHA-1 was insecure and "It's time for us all to migrate away from SHA-1." were published prior to git's initial 2005 release: http

FWIW, the first warnings that SHA-1 was insecure and "It's time for us all to migrate away from SHA-1." were published prior to git's initial 2005 release: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/cryptanalysis_o.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/cryptanalysis...

vacri 10y ago
Because as we know, the security industry isn't a firehose of fear about everything that isn't airgapped (and then airgapping itself). Security recommendations come so thick and fast that even security researchers themselves don't bother following them. Even the bloke in your link explicitly apologises for using Word for some things, and he's considered a saint in the industry. What all the commenters here doing a hatchet-job on Torvalds are missing is that he's saying "show me the money"/"perfect is the enemy of good". The hatchet-jobbers are too busy doing the usual tittering over his language to actually absorb the point.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Clearly, Linus didn't know at the time. If he'd know, he would have chosen another hash in 3 seconds —no additional complexity, no additional effort involved in not choosing a hash the security community starts to have doubts about.
  - dingo_bat 10y ago
    Don't forget the extra computation cost with a more complex hash.
    - KingMob 10y ago
      Which is largely irrelevant on desktops. Nobody's using git on embedded devices, so hash computational cost shouldn't be the deciding factor. Maybe people storing BLOBs will notice.
      - reacweb 10y ago
        There are blobs in the kernel and speed was a very important motivation when kernel switched to git.
        loup-vaillant 10y ago
        So now we need to assess whether hashes are a significant bottleneck.
    - loup-vaillant 10y ago
      Nobody cares. Hashes are plenty fast. Even the code complexity doesn't matter: I've implemented both SHA-256, and SHA-512, take less than a hundred lines of code. And of course, Linus would have use some existing implementation. Also, "more secure" doesn't necessarily mean "more complex", or "slower". Blake2b for instance is as fast as md5 and has a simple RAX (xor, rot, add) core from Chacha20.
      - Kubuxu 10y ago
        It wasn't like that in 2005.
- fulafel 10y ago
  Security industry != crypto academia.

vacri 10y ago

Because as we know, the security industry isn't a firehose of fear about everything that isn't airgapped (and then airgapping itself). Security recommendations come so thick and fast that even security researchers themselves don't bother following them. Even the bloke in your link explicitly apologises for using Word for some things, and he's considered a saint in the industry. What all the commenters here doing a hatchet-job on Torvalds are missing is that he's saying "show me the money"/"perfect is the enemy of good". The hatchet-jobbers are too busy doing the usual tittering over his language to actually absorb the point.

loup-vaillant 10y ago
Clearly, Linus didn't know at the time. If he'd know, he would have chosen another hash in 3 seconds —no additional complexity, no additional effort involved in not choosing a hash the security community starts to have doubts about.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Don't forget the extra computation cost with a more complex hash.
  - KingMob 10y ago
    Which is largely irrelevant on desktops. Nobody's using git on embedded devices, so hash computational cost shouldn't be the deciding factor. Maybe people storing BLOBs will notice.
    - reacweb 10y ago
      There are blobs in the kernel and speed was a very important motivation when kernel switched to git.
      - loup-vaillant 10y ago
        So now we need to assess whether hashes are a significant bottleneck.
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago
    Nobody cares. Hashes are plenty fast. Even the code complexity doesn't matter: I've implemented both SHA-256, and SHA-512, take less than a hundred lines of code. And of course, Linus would have use some existing implementation. Also, "more secure" doesn't necessarily mean "more complex", or "slower". Blake2b for instance is as fast as md5 and has a simple RAX (xor, rot, add) core from Chacha20.
    - Kubuxu 10y ago
      It wasn't like that in 2005.
fulafel 10y ago
Security industry != crypto academia.