Well that blew up, huh? If you follow emulation or just gaming on the whole, you've probably heard about the controversy around the Dolphin Steam release and the Wii Common Key. There's been a lot of conclusions made, and while we've wanted to defend ourselves, we thought it would be prudent to contact lawyers first to make sure that our understanding of the situation was legally sound. That took some time, which was frustrating to ourselves and to our users, but now we are educated and ready to give an informed response.
A hash converts a large input into a small output. If a hash takes up to 128 ASCII characters and outputs 64, there will be ~10^135 collisions per output. This is completely normal and not a design flaw. It’s simple math.
The strength of a cyyptographic hash function (not the only kind of hash or the only useful kind) is in not being predictable, not in avoiding collisions.
A hash can take more inputs than it has outputs. By definition there have to be collisions.
…what are you even talking about? A hashing algorithm takes one data input and makes one hash from said data input.
A hash converts a large input into a small output. If a hash takes up to 128 ASCII characters and outputs 64, there will be ~10^135 collisions per output. This is completely normal and not a design flaw. It’s simple math.
The strength of a cyyptographic hash function (not the only kind of hash or the only useful kind) is in not being predictable, not in avoiding collisions.