What do most attacks on hash functions involve?

A. Finding Collisions
B. Pre-generating millions of hashes and comparing them to the plain text that generates it.
C. Really good random guessing.

1 answer

A. Finding Collisions

Most attacks on hash functions involve finding collisions, which means discovering two different inputs that produce the same hash output. This undermines the properties of cryptographic hash functions, particularly their ability to provide uniqueness and integrity for data. While options B and C can also play a role in specific contexts (like rainbow table attacks or brute-force attacks), finding collisions is a primary focus in the context of hash function vulnerabilities.