project hash of life
a cellular approach to cryptographic hash functions
![](./images/seperator_line_grey.png)
A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a deterministic procedure,
that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string,
the (cryptographic) hash value, such that an accidental or intentional
change to the data will change the hash value.
While studying cellular automatons (CA) in 2002, I stumbled upon the possibility
of deriving a cryptographic hash from certain characteristics of the life cycle
a cellular automaton goes through given an initial state.
Implementing a proof of concept, I focused on Conways Game Of Life as
ruleset for the automaton, using the binary representation of the message to
be hashed as initial state.
![](./images/seperator_line_grey.png)
Right now, research has to be done to proof that certain requirements of a CA
based hash function are met, including that it is:
infeasible to find a message that has a given hash
infeasible to find two different message with the same hash (collission)
infeasible to modify a message without changing its hash
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