[fitsbits] Hash Functions (MD5 is very obsolete)

[Arnold Rots]

The RXTE archive contains SHA(-1) (FIPS 180-1) digests for all its
data products. But, to my knowledge, it has not been used by any users
worried about the integrity of the data they received.

  - Arnold

Rob Seaman wrote:
> Thierry Forveille wrote:
> 
> > Is anyone on the list aware of uses of the MD5 checksum in FITS  
> > beyond protection against accidental bitflips from bad hardware?
> 
> Good question!
> 
> If the goal is to protect against data accidents (whatever the cause),  
> the FITS checksum should be considered as a strong contender instead  
> of any secure hash.
> 
> That said, MD5 is used by default for many astronomical data transport  
> and archive chores.  As the broader computing communities continue to  
> transition to SHA-2, support for MD5-based utilities will narrow.   
> Remediating this is certainly not a top priority, however, which is  
> why I worded it as a "reminder" :-)
> 
> When implementing new systems, there are few good arguments for  
> choosing MD5.
> 
> Rob
> 
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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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