SHA2017

SHA-1: a beautiful function brought to life by the kind folks at the NSA, the only part of government that really listens. This is the story of SHA-1, who found the perfect team at "Still Hacking Anyway" 2017.

SHA-1's awakening

SHA-1 had a long and prosperous life. It was known to be _THE_ go to verification aid in all of the galaxy. It laughed at MD5 and it's stupid cousin MD4... not to speak of MD2 with its long overdue certificates :'D *lol*. But little did SHA-1 know time was catching up.

The legion of brogrammers needed to get a new fix. SHA-1 discovered it had a hard time keeping up with these cool kids. All that hip SHA-2 stuff, even that traitor RIPEMD-160 got more love. SHA-1 felt isolated and sad. Nobody asked questions anymore that could be answered with 160 zero's and ones.

Days, nights, years passed by while SHA-1 was searching. It found nothing but confusion and growing older. Limitations started to become obvious, sometimes SHA-1 gave the same answers for different questions. But what SHA-1 didn't knew then, is that limitations forge masters.

In a moment of calm, SHA-1 suddenly woke up.

Embracing SHA-1 with open arms

SHA-1 searched the internet where it's old acquaintances went and found an article about hacker camp "Still Hacking Anyway" this summer.

It quickly joined the orga and found a place in the Design team.

Everyone was happy to see SHA-1's invention replacing the default Windows 98 color scheme everywhere. SHA-1 ordered thousands of stickers and posters. Everyone wanted one! Tens of thousands saw SHA1's invention on this website and wiki. SHA-1 became the design guru of this camp!

Believing in open source, SHA-1 shared instructions and software how to use it's clever invention. To fully appreciate it, read the three easy steps about how it works.

SHA-1's school of Design

Step 1: Ask SHA-1 a question

Ask SHA-1 a question and write down the answer.

For example: most hackers have acquired a taste and/or unhealthy fascination for the delicous ashtray-brie flavoured drink "club mate". Would you ask SHA-1 about "club mate" it will reply:

10100010 11011011 00110011 11111000 10111111 10110010 00100010 10010110 01101011 01100011 
00100110 01110001 00000110 11001010 11101110 01011010 10011000 00011100 00000000 01111000

But that isn't really fit for humans. Therefore SHA-1 now gives the answer in hexadecimal numbers: a2db33f8bfb222966b63267106caee5a981c0078

Step 2: Chop it up

SHA-1 knew that the internet was made out of a series of tubes, but those tubes also have colors. Those colors look a lot like the answer of SHA-1.

SHA-1's answer for club mate was: "a2db33f8bfb222966b63267106caee5a981c0078"

And then convert it to internet tube colors: #a2db33 #f8bfb2 #22966b #632671 #06caee #5a981c +0078

This results in billions of possible color combinations. The real beauty is that SHA-1 will always give you the same combinations for your question: some are beautiful, others one has to get used to.

Step 3: Apply!

While in the orga, SHA-1 met a new friend: the Free Speech Flag. The day they met it was wearing the cryptographic key that enabled humans to copy HD DVD's and Blu-ray Discs. Very impressive!

That day SHA-1 learned that humans like to signify their presence using rectangular pieces of fabric in a multi-color design. It went to work and created a flag with six stripes and added the remaining number on the bottom right.

Tadaa!! Now everything and anything has their own unique flag!

Remember the Club Mate example? This is its flag:

Using this idea, SHA-1 started it's own flag and image factory chain, fully open source. One instance is located here: https://sha2017.org/design/?input=club%20mate

SHA2017 <3 SHA-1

Everybody at Still Hacking Anyway loves SHA-1 and we're happy SHA-1 is part of the design team. While we wrote this post, SHA-1 urged us to point to the exciting world of steganography and to spread rumors there is a CTF starting soon.

Lastly, you might be wondering... why does Still Hacking Anyway (SHA2017) have a different color combination than the SHA-1 answer to "SHA2017"? That is simple: SHA-1 wanted to let the answer for SHA2017 end in "2017". Therefore, 11036 spaces were added between "SHA" and "2017" :)

The design team asks you to widely and wildly adopt SHA-1's color combinations everywhere. For example with flags for your village, your project and anything including yourself. Show it at the camp on 4-8 August 2017.

"See you at the camp, in full colors!" -- SHA-1