Decius wrote:
] ] Where does this leave us? MD5 is fatally wounded; its
] ] use will be phased out. SHA-1 is still alive but the
] ] vultures are circling. A gradual transition away from
] ] SHA-1 will now start. The first stage will be a debate
] ] about alternatives, leading (I hope) to a consensus among
] ] practicing cryptographers about what the substitute will
] ] be.
]
] Answer, not a 5 alarm fire, but if you write or maintain
] cryptography code you can still expect some work coming up.

Hal Finney has posted a nice writeup of Joux's SHA-0 result to the cryptography list. The implications are pretty significant for CHF design...

"Nevertheless, Joux's results cast doubt on the very strategy of building hashes out of iterating compression functions. It appears that there is no hope of creating hashes in this way which approximate the theoretical model of a random function, which is the usual design goal for hash functions. This will probably further motivate researchers to explore new directions in hash function design."

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg02611.html

RE: Followup on SHA-1 break

Cave explorers discovered a pit inside a mountain range in central Croatia believed to have the world's deepest subterranean vertical drop, at nearly 1,700 feet, a scientific institute reported Monday.

[...]

At the foot of the Velebit cave are small ponds and streams, including one of the largest known colonies of subterranean leeches, Sutlovic Baksic said.

Explorers find world's deepest hole

This lengthy and highly technical primer provides a gentle yet thorough introduction to elliptical key cryptography (ECC), said to be ideal for resource-constrained systems because it provides more "security per bit" than other types of asymmetric cryptography.

An Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Primer

It's the cradle of Shangri-la, and one of the deepest river gorges on earth. It's a fortress guarding sacred waterfalls, and a cauldron of savage whitewater and unrunnable rapids. In the chill of the Himalayan winter, seven world-class kayakers led a massive expedition into the shadowy realm of Tibet's Tsangpo River , and launched their boats down its roaring throat. They were either going to die—or emerge transformed.

Liquid Thunder

After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week.

The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox.

Hawking cracks black hole paradox

] In 1912 Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book
] dealer, made the find of a lifetime: a manuscript
] some 230 pages long, written in an unusual script
] and richly illustrated with bizarre images of
] plants, heavenly spheres and bathing women. Despite
] 90 years of effort by some of the world's best
] code breakers, no one has been able to decipher the
] script. The failure of the code-breaking attempts
] has raised the suspicion that it may simply be an
] elaborate hoax.

Scientific American has a writeup by Gordon Rugg
on how the manuscript may have been faked.

SciAm: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript

Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports.

Teleportation breakthrough made

The prototype SenseCam takes an instant snap every time it spots changes in movement, temperature or light.

[...]

The camera uses accelerometers to detect motion, passive infrared to detect another human being, and digital sensors for light and temperature monitoring.

'Black box' cam for total recall

PASADENA, Calif. -- Imagine driving down a twisty mountain road on a dark foggy night. Visibility is near-zero, yet you still can see clearly. Not through your windshield, but via an image on a screen in front of you.

Such a built-in radar system in our cars has long been in the domain of science fiction, as well as wishful thinking on the part of commuters. But such gadgets could become available in the very near future, thanks to the High Speed Integrated Circuits group at the California Institute of Technology.

The group is directed by Ali Hajimiri, an associate professor of electrical engineering. Hajimiri and his team have used revolutionary design techniques to build the world's first radar on a chip--specifically, they have implemented a novel antenna array system on a single, silicon chip.

Caltech Engineers Design a Revolutionary Radar Chip

''Waste heat'' might not be such a waste after all. The excess heat produced in everything from microelectronics to large ship engines is generally thought of as a problem for engineers to solve. But a new leap in semiconductor technology funded by the Office of Naval Research could put that troublesome heat to good use.

Waste not, want not: Converting waste heat into electricity