An attempt to backdoor the kernel

An attempt to backdoor the kernel

Posted Nov 20, 2003 6:40 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: An attempt to backdoor the kernel by lm
Parent article: An attempt to backdoor the kernel

"In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are different"

Exactly! Here is difference: if we have two systems - one uses SHA1 without any colluisions detection and other uses SHA1 and linked list as backup then version without backup is less reliable in theoty but more reliable in practice!

I'm joking, right ? How the hell version without collision detection can be more reliable ?

No, I'm not joking. You all ussume that you "perfect" program will work on some "perfect" hardware. That's not so. Real CPU, memory, hard disk and other components are not 100% reliable. Thus you program can misdetect even if you algorythm is perfect. And this probability is increased when linked list added as backup for strong crypto hash. For most non-trivial programs this increase is so big that it completely dwarfs mythical SHA1 collisions. Think about it and then try to advocate you backup plans. Preferrable with numbers for hardware in hands, not with some abstract righteosy.

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