Short-input hashing
Example
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#define SHORT_DATA ((const unsigned char *) "Sparkling water")
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#define SHORT_DATA_LEN 15
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​
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unsigned char hash[crypto_shorthash_BYTES];
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unsigned char key[crypto_shorthash_KEYBYTES];
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​
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crypto_shorthash_keygen(key);
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crypto_shorthash(hash, SHORT_DATA, SHORT_DATA_LEN, key);
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Purpose
Many applications and programming language implementations were recently found to be vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks when a hash function with weak security guarantees, such as MurmurHash3, was used to construct a hash table.
To address this, Sodium provides the
crypto_shorthash() function, which outputs short but unpredictable (without knowing the secret key) values suitable for picking a list in a hash table for a given key.This function is optimized for short inputs.
The output of this function is only 64 bits. Therefore, it should not be considered collision-resistant.
Use cases:
- Hash tables
- Probabilistic data structures, such as Bloom filters
- Integrity checking in interactive protocols
Usage
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int crypto_shorthash(unsigned char *out, const unsigned char *in,
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unsigned long long inlen, const unsigned char *k);
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Compute a fixed-size (
crypto_shorthash_BYTES bytes) fingerprint for the message in whose length is inlen bytes, using the key k.The
k is crypto_shorthash_KEYBYTES bytes and can be created using crypto_shorthash_keygen().The same message hashed with the same key will always produce the same output.
Constants
crypto_shorthash_BYTEScrypto_shorthash_KEYBYTES
Algorithm details
SipHash-2-4
Notes
- The key must remain secret. This function will not provide any mitigations against DoS attacks if the key is known from attackers.
- When building hash tables, it is recommended to use a prime number for the table size. This ensures that all bits from the output of the hash function are being used. Mapping the range of the hash function to
[0..N)can be done efficiently without modulo reduction. - libsodium >= 1.0.12 also implements a variant of SipHash with the same key size but a 128-bit output, accessible as
crypto_shorthash_siphashx24().
Last modified 4mo ago