>> SHA is Memoryless and Progress-Free > Technically false, because memory-less processes have positive probabilty of yielding no block after 2^256 tries, wher

>> SHA is Memoryless and Progress-Free > Technically false, because memory-less processes have positive probabilty of yielding no block after 2^256 tries, whereas for sha-256 using brute force, this probability is totally 0. I don't think this matters at the current hash-rate though. You may be right about my use of "memoryless", though it won't matter at any hashrate :) "...brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space" (B. Schneier "Applied Cryptography").