cryptographycollisionshasha512

is SHA-512 collision resistant?


According to the books that i have read, it says that S.H.A(Secure Hash Algorithm) is collision resistant.But if the input space is a 1024 bit number and the output space is a 512 bit message digest then shouldn't it be colliding for (2^1024)/(2^512) times? As the range is lesser than the domain being mapped there should have been collisions. please explain where i am going wrong.


Solution

  • Maybe your book has also mentioned the definition of collision resistance? It does not mean that no collisions are created (which is clearly not the case), but that given a hash you are not able to create a message easily that produces this hash.

    a hash function H is collision resistant if it is hard to find two inputs that hash to the same output; that is, two inputs a and b such that H(a) = H(b), and a ≠ b

    From Wikipedia