Re: [lists] Combining Hashes

[Elliott Bäck <ecb29 () cornell edu>]

Kent Borg wrote:

> I admit I don't know why this might be significantly better than
> d1+d2, I was hoping someone here would.
>  

I think there are a couple things going on here.  First, since + is 
concatenation, SHA-1(SHA-1(data)+data+MD5(data)) provides an input to 
the hash that is three times as long as before.  I'm also not familiar 
with the inner workings on SHA-1 and MD-5, but the second idea here is 
that they both represent (somewhat) orthogonal solution spaces, so that 
the concatenation of both of them adds more dimensionality and therefore 
more uniqueness.

However, I am just guessing here off the top of my head.

Thanks,
Elliott C. Bäck

607-229-0623
http://elliottback.com