why is SHA1 used? How do I get SHA256 to be used?

[Werner Koch]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:56, rjh at sixdemonbag.org said:

> V5 discussions will not kick off in earnest until NIST announces the new
> hash standard, or so I've heard people from the working group say.

And even then it will take 5 years or so until it it has been deployed
widely.  Even GnuPG 1.2 is still in use; despite that it has been
declared EOL ages ago.

The fingerprint and the special features building upon it
(e.g. revocation keys) are targets for an attack based on a SHA-1
*pre-image* attack.  We need to analyze the possible problems and if
needed deploy workarounds for them.  SHA-256 for signatures is already
in widespread use - thus I don't see a problem right now.

The real problem I see for GnuPG is that its maintenance is heavily
under-financed and the pool of volunteers, taking care of it, is quite
small.  I am not sure whether PGP is in a better position; giving its
current owner.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

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