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from the renaming-it-to-be-NSHA:-the-Not-Secure-Hashing-Algorithm dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The Wall Street fintech Treadwell Stanton DuPont broke silence today as it announced its Research & Development and Science Teams successfully broke the SHA-256[*] hashing algorithm silently in controlled laboratory conditions over a year ago. The announcement aims to secure financial and technological platform superiority to its clients and investors worldwide.
[...] While the best public cryptanalysis has tried to break the hashing function since its inception in 2001, work on searching, developing and testing practical collision and pre-image vulnerabilities on the SHA-256 hashing algorithm began back in 2016 in Treadwell Stanton DuPont's R&D facilities, culminating 2 years later with the successful discovery of a structural weakness and the initial development of the first practical solution space of real world value by its researchers.
"While we have successfully broken all 64 rounds of pre-image resistance," said Seiijiro Takamoto, Treadwell Stanton DuPont's director of newly formed Hardware Engineering Division, "it is not our intention to bring down Bitcoin, break SSL/TLS security or crack any financial sector security whatsoever."
[*] See the SHA-2 page on Wikipedia for background on SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA-512/224, and SHA-512/256.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:21AM
Could be a pump and dump scheme, yes. Usually "real results" are not announced this way.
My guess is to avoid massive SEC legal impact, there is a kernel of truth where they DID bust SHA-256 down to the equivalent of SHA-255.99999 AND SIMULTANEOUSLY theres a chance there might be a pump and dump scheme underway.