On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, John Valdes wrote:
[ cool explanation snipped ]
> let you in.  The hash functions are also chosen so that no two
> distinct values yield the same hash (eg, MD5("foo") and MD5("fop")
> will give completely different values), so as a result, the system can

A nit: there are many distinct values that yield the same hash... I
think the idea behind a cryptographically secure hash is that it's
extremely difficult to come up with a file that will have a specific
hash (i.e., you can't go "I want a file that will have an md5 hash of
0x112233445566778899aabbccddeeff00"), and that it's extremely difficult
to modify a file while keeping the hash the same (this is probably a
consequence of the first property; not sure :).
-- 
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