Talk:Birthday attack

message: The headers 'Understanding the Problem', 'source code', and 'simple approximation' relate more to the birthday problem than defining a birthday attack.  The code is particularly egregious in that it focuses on finding the probability of a birthday match, not the mechanics of creating that match.
'Understanding the problem' could be called 'Definition' (and rewritten). 
The information under the "Understanding the Problem" section is mostly related to smart contracts, but they're never actually defined or referenced anywhere, making the entire paragraph related to that mostly useless information.
The mathematics section is of secondary interest and should be moved after the 'Digital Signature susceptibility' (which in itself should be renamed).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.104.59.76 (talk) 01:11, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure 

message: I changed the name "Alice" to "Mallet". Because in IT Sec. it is common to use the names Bob and Alice for good communication partners and Eve or Mallet for bad communication partners. So Alice wouldn't fake signatur, but Mallet would.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.246.2.74 (talk) 10:58, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Digital signature susceptibility 

message: The table given here and the table at Birthday_problem#Probability_table have different values. Which one is correct? Or if they're calculating different things, that probably should be made clearer. -- 205.175.124.30 (talk) 19:15, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: They seem to match to me. Don't forget that that table has a different unit for key size. Number774 (talk) 16:22, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which table is correct? 

message: It would be interesting to add some discussion about the probability of git hash collisions, since git absolutely relies on the probability of hash collision being so low.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.68.105.246 (talk) 03:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't the security of git depend on the collision resistance of the underlying hash function and not on the probability of a random collision? 178.195.225.28 (talk) 11:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Git hash collisions 

message: it would be nice to have a reference for the full mathematical details in the "Mathematics" section.
Why do the approximation holds? How is Q computed? A reference would be appreciated.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.110.147.162 (talk) 08:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The page Birthday problem contains derivations and references for the for the equations used here. 83.77.189.6 (talk) 18:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  It doesn't appear to show how Q(H) is derived, specificially where the approximation/derivation of \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{2}} comes from (there's no mention of pi in the birthday problem article) or how it is different from p(n) = 0.5. WhiteCrane (talk) 10:21, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Math details 

message: The table had such interesting values as 6.1 for the number of times you need to run an attack to get the desired probability of a collision. Since you've either run a hash through, or you haven't, the number of attacks is an integer. I've therefore rounded them off to the nearest integer.
Note that where the probability is low, and the key size is small, you only need to run two attacks. I've marked all these as "less than two". Number774 (talk) 16:30, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Integral number of birthdays 

message: The example is unfortunately not written in a totally valid standard C++ way.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.236.187.110 (talk) 22:47, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source code example 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Edited the line stating the B&K work allowed quantifying or even estimating frequency of collisions of a hash function.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.69.182.76 (talk) 00:45, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrected the statement regarding Bellare and Kohno 'balance' calculation 

message: One of the equations in the mathematics section is cited from the article "What is birthday attack??", by Ganesh Gupta. However, in the article itself, Wikipedia is cited, and the specific items are not individually cited, simply placed in a references section at the end. The cite was added on the 18th July 2020, with the article being written in 2015. Could this be an example of citogenesis? 2A00:23C7:1D08:4C01:41F4:1158:48C8:F77C (talk) 17:24, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I've replaced the citation with lecture notes that provide a proof for the inequality. Not sure about the approximation though. Phesch-de (talk) 16:37, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible citogenesis 

message: The article cites “inserting commas [and] empty lines” as two ways to alter a document “without changing [its] meaning”. In my opinion, inserting commas is a bad example, and should be deleted from that section of the article. In support of this, here’s a case where a single missing comma, in a legal document, lead to a US$10 million lawsuit:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/the-case-of-the-$13-million-comma/8372956
07:56, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete “inserting commas” 

message: It's not immediately clear how we get from this...
: n(0.5;H) \approx 1.1774 \sqrt H
... to this...
: Q(H)\approx \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{2}H}
I assume it's the expected value as defined in statistics, but it is unclear how \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{2}}\approx 1.25 is generated (I would hazard a guess that \sqrt{\pi} is related to the gaussian curve, which fits with the exponential approximation).
WhiteCrane (talk) 00:57, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Clarity Required for Q(X)