> Cracking a hash would [...]. There are an infinite number of > messages that all hash to the same value.
Yes, but there's no guarantee that this is true of any particular hash value, such as the one you're intersted in, only that there exists at least one hash value that it's true of. (At least, for hash functions in general. A *good* hash function will of course have this property for all hash values. I don't know whether SHA-1 is good in this respect, though I would expect it is.) Okay, nitpicky-mathematician mode off.... :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML [EMAIL PROTECTED] / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. _______________________________________________