Re: [Monotone-devel] Hash collisions resiliency

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 04:48:40PM -0700, tekHedd wrote:
> Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> [a comprehensive answer to my question which is exactly what I need to
> make me feel comfortable]
> 
> Thanks for answering this. I feel much better about the worst case
> scenario(*).

Glad I could help.

> For those who _yet_ _again_ reminded me how improbable it is when
> compared to hardware failure: sure, I'll bite. Perhaps I should be
> asking what will happen to my monolithic SQLite database when I have
> corruption due to hardware failure, malicious generation of duplicate
> keys using as yet undiscovered weaknesses in SHA1(*), or software
> bugs(*). ;)

If you somehow manage to miss the, say, smoke coming out of the back
of the computer, then monotone still catches the problem before
anything bad happens (except possibly in the SHA1 collision case, as
discussed), tells you you have a problem, you throw out that database
(and, presumably, hardware), do a fresh pull from one of the many
backup copies that all your friendly co-developers have been keeping
for you, and continue on.

(It's probably a good idea to have a backup of your private key,
though.  Though if it were lost, you could just generate a new
one with a different name, it's just a bit of a hassle.)

-- Nathaniel

-- 
.i dei jitfa fanmo xatra