There are many localized states of GOL which map into the "all dead" state. This happens because a whole myriad of adjacent states will map into the same state. The dealbreaker with Conway GOL is that it maps many different messages into the same digest. (I reckon no known collisions have ever been found in SHA256. Even with supercomputers, nobody has ever found a collision in SHA-512. So easily, it could plausible be done with paper-and-pencil.Ĭompare this property to professional hash functions. Is there anything published on this topic? Google wasn't too helpful.Ĭonway's GOL is absolutely terrible for cryptography.Ī hash collision can be easily constructed. Does anyone know roughly how much computation would be required for similar levels of security using Life? I suspect it's a lot more. In real life security, a hash algorithm that takes one second to check a password makes for exceptional security. I can think of a few: Checking for escaping spaceships or lack thereof Stable patterns. I imagine Life allows many ways to shortcut brute-forcing by terminating early. A good secure hash takes just as long to brute-force test one password as it does to verify the correct password. I don't know if that's enough to cheaply generate hash collisions.Įven in the case where there are no shortcuts to generating collisions, there is still the problem of computational power. Are there any simple flaws that prevent it from being used as a secure hash (purely for fun, of course)? Easy glider synthesis is the first one that comes to mind. Obviously Life isn't designed as a hash algorithm, much less a cryptographically strong one. This would generate a "hash" that could be used to verify the password. You could create a Life grid based on, say, a password, and step it forward by a couple million generations. A list of book recommendations from our community for various topics can be found here.Ĭonway's Game of Life is very much like a hash algorithm, in that any given output can be produced by many inputs. If you are new to Computer Science please read our FAQ before posting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |