Re: Stop using PDFs ?
Also, let's not use the term "calculate" when we refer to this stunt Google pulled off. Anything that uses 6500 years of compute time sounds a lot more like trial & error to me... or trial, verify, dismiss, repeat. Not quite a straight forward calculation. So SHA-1 is not really broken; it's just too weak as compute power becomes cheaper.
Thomas Edison is said to have found hundreds of ways that don't work for making light bulbs. For a long time there were 0 light bulbs in the world, then there was one, and suddenly not only were there thousands and then millions but whole construction industries (very little reason to run power cables to homes before electric light, so very few towns even had electricity). In a very short time massive amounts of industry and the relevant research into improved efficiencies came about because one person figured out how to do something.
Google have shown it can be done. Someone will optimize the code and shave some time off (and at 6,500 years, even one in a billion reduced instructions will save a hell of a lot of time!), someone else will look at the math and see a better equation, and someone will drop an instruction on their rather large botnet. First run might be 6,500 years, second might be 1,000 hours.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
