Re:BitTorrent v2
by loeg on Monday September 07, 2020 @05:37PM
(#24403138)
I would guess that the reasoning is similar to why Git is moving to SHA256 (from SHA1) rather than to BLAKE3 — SHA256 was around 5 years ago and the major design change has been in the works for a while (BEP 52 dates to 2017). BLAKE3 (2019) would be a fine choice today.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:BitTorrent v2
by johnisgood on Monday September 07, 2020 @07:43PM
(#24403851)
I see. Thank you! By the way, I have not thought much about it, so in case you may know: would not it be possible to implement this in a way that allows swapping the hash function? So for example when we run into issues with SHA-256, change the hash function to something else.
We already can: the "swap" will just be a v3 along the same lines.
Re:BitTorrent v2
by johnisgood on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @12:19PM
(#24409884)
Yeah, but would not they have to create v4, v5 and so forth every N years, for different hash functions?
Sure, but this is not any more expensive than any other versioning scheme you might be thinking of. Consider also that they got 19+ years out of v1, and that there is no reason to believe SHA2 will be broken faster than SHA1.
Re:BitTorrent v2
by johnisgood on Tuesday September 08, 2020 @01:58PM
(#24410919)
Probably, but would it be possible to make it so that one could easily swap the hash function? Like I am curious about the details here. I think it would be. Clients probably will have to implement a couple of commonly used hash functions, and so forth. I am not sure how it would work in practice or if it is worth it at all. I am interested in all the details though.