2024-11-02 Hash functions are incredibly neat mathematical objects. They can map arbitrary data to a small fixed-size output domain such that the mapping is deterministic, yet appears to be random. This “deterministic randomness” is incredibly useful for a variety of purposes, such as hash tables, checksums, monte carlo algorithms, communication-less distributed algorithms, etc, the list goes on. In this article we will take a look at the dark side of hash functions: when things go wrong. Luckil...