The neat thing about bitcoin is that the incentive to break it is so high that it would almost certainly be the first place you would learn that SHA2 had been broken. Not on a website like this. I can verify its integrity by opening robinhood on my phone.
Secure hash functions are used to make a short version of a large file. Ideally, it has several properties including making it infeasible to find two files with the same cryptographic hash. We've just gotten 92% of the way there. This has security ramifications in that other researchers are expected to be able to complete the work through similar methods as explored in the paper. We weren't sure if this was a remarkable result, since it's not a full collision
I thought this meant they were able to generate collisions for 92% of files/hashes they tried, but it sounds like they're able to generate hashes that are 92% identical?
I looked into citation [5] since it sounded interesting but the DOI link has been hallucinated and goes to some other article. I assume many of the others are similarly bogus.
I'd expect a finding / paper like this to be submitted to the IACR ePrint server [1] to bring it to the attention of the cryptographic community. I can't see that it's been submitted yet.
Venue should not imply credibility but in this case it would certainly help bring the proper scrutiny.
> his report was generated on 2026-03-22 as the final artifact of the SHA-256 Cryptanalysis
Research Project. Collaboration: Robert V. (research direction, strategy) and Claude/Anthropic (implementation, computation).
This Claude guy is pretty prolific it seems.
But I'll wait for some known cryptographers to chime in
> it is possible that we'll find relations that carry across the entire double-SHA-256 pipeline
Bitcoin mining is a partial second preimage of 0x00 though, not a collision, that statement just seems to be so outside the realm of what they’re claiming to have done. Even MD5, the most widely known to be broken hash, would be secure when used in the same way bitcoin uses SHA256 (other than being too short now, bitcoin miners have done 80 bits of work at this point many times over).
> The State of Utopia is an AI-governed nation with two goals:
> 1. ~~Improve the family relationship between its founders Ella and Robert so they can live together as a happy family.~~ Done!
> 2. To act in the best interests of all our citizens.
We publish this work as responsible disclosure. While a full SHA-256 collision (sr = 64) has not yet been achieved, the tools and techniques presented here represent significant methodological advances that bring it closer. Organizations relying on SHA-256 for collision resistance should begin evaluating migration paths to SHA-3 or other post-quantum hash functions. The cryptographic community should treat the collision resistance of SHA-256 as having a finite and shrinking safety margin.
80 comments
[1] https://stateofutopia.com/papers/2/intermediate-report.pdf
>
Secure hash functions are used to make a short version of a large file. Ideally, it has several properties including making it infeasible to find two files with the same cryptographic hash. We've just gotten 92% of the way there. This has security ramifications in that other researchers are expected to be able to complete the work through similar methods as explored in the paper. We weren't sure if this was a remarkable result, since it's not a full collisionI thought this meant they were able to generate collisions for 92% of files/hashes they tried, but it sounds like they're able to generate hashes that are 92% identical?
Venue should not imply credibility but in this case it would certainly help bring the proper scrutiny.
[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/
> his report was generated on 2026-03-22 as the final artifact of the SHA-256 Cryptanalysis Research Project. Collaboration: Robert V. (research direction, strategy) and Claude/Anthropic (implementation, computation).
This Claude guy is pretty prolific it seems.
But I'll wait for some known cryptographers to chime in
Do some research and write a paper about breaking Bitcoin.
> it is possible that we'll find relations that carry across the entire double-SHA-256 pipeline
Bitcoin mining is a partial second preimage of 0x00 though, not a collision, that statement just seems to be so outside the realm of what they’re claiming to have done. Even MD5, the most widely known to be broken hash, would be secure when used in the same way bitcoin uses SHA256 (other than being too short now, bitcoin miners have done 80 bits of work at this point many times over).
> The State of Utopia is an AI-governed nation with two goals: > 1. ~~Improve the family relationship between its founders Ella and Robert so they can live together as a happy family.~~ Done! > 2. To act in the best interests of all our citizens.
What is the verdict (humans)?
AI slop research or modern cryptography (and society) flushed down the toilet overnight?
I can't immediately tell from the thread so far... :)