Mechanical hashing

[darkv0rt3x]

Is anything like that, people is talking about here?

Well, there is one main requirement: it should require no external power supply. If there is power outage, that device should still work. Someone proposed chemical hashing, I thought more about mechanical hashing, because it seems to be easier to compute than using paper and pencil, and it should be easier to learn, how to operate that. I thought about something simple, like constructing some tables for basic operations, like addition, rotation, xor, then it could be possible to compute hash functions manually, just by rotating a crank, or providing needed energy to the system in other simple ways. For example, it could be possible to paint squares in different colours to represent zeroes and ones, then negating the whole number could be done by simply rotating some wheels inside it by 180 degrees.

I thought about many different ways of doing that, but it seems some mechanical engineer is needed to make it real. It could use some buttons, some magnets, some rotating wheels with hex digits from "0" to "f", there are many options. Each state can be represented in many different ways, you could also place something here, like a marble (when it is present, it could represent "logical one", and when it is empty, it could represent "logical zero"). It could use gravity to implement logical gates. I don't know exactly how to make it, because I didn't find anything like that anywhere, maybe just nobody needed it yet.

To put it simply, it should be better than paper and pencil, and should work in cases, where no electricity is available, or if there is power outage, that's the general idea behind it. And I think making it in a mechanical way would be the simplest solution to that, but maybe there is something better available, I don't know (but I am not convinced for example to the chemical solution, that could be hard to do in a typical home, I think building a physical machine, or passing a ready-to-assemble project for some manufacturer, would be easier).

Edit: some visualization, how it could look like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Grant_mechanical_calculating_machine_1877.jpg
Of course it is just an example, because hash functions are more complex than that.

Well, I don't even have all the knowledge present in memory to at least make a mental sketch of what would be needed. I am an electrical engineer but I am not even close to be able to put up something like this. This is something probably to be put up as a project with several stages an probably multiple teams working on each stage! Or someone really bright/smart/intelligent capable of pulling this off alone! I'm not that one for sure!

You need to know exactly about bits and bytes, cryptography, probabbly mechanical engineering, learn or find someone to design components in 3D software with great precision, think about probably thousands of details in each stage of the project etc.

If you are really into this, maybe we should start by making a statement and say: I have this goal. I want to do this and that. Whoever is interested and whoever has any type of skills, feel free to onbard. After that, we would need to start laying down the stages, tasks for each stage, what knowledge and skills are needed in each stage, etc. I can't see this done by simply throwing ideas in the air like we are doing!

If this machine is anything like the Turing machine, I can't imagine how many thousands of hours were spent by those 2 guys and probably by a bunch of other unknown people in the background!

Check this thing: Enigma machine used by Germans to encrypt messages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ

xD

And then check the craking machine here, at aroun 5:30. Machine Turing built to decrypt Enigma machine encryption!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb44bGY2KdU

[larry_vw_1955]

Check this thing: Enigma machine used by Germans to encrypt messages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ

a mechanical sha-256 hashing machine would probably be more complex than this enigma thing.  keep in mind too that the enigma was not purely mechanical. it was really electronic in nature.

[Cricktor]

The electrical part of the Enigma was purely used for current flow to highlight the result of the purely mechanical change of rewirering of characters. The encryption process ie. the change of character to character wirering is completely mechanical.

[larry_vw_1955]

The electrical part of the Enigma was purely used for current flow to highlight the result of the purely mechanical change of rewirering of characters. The encryption process ie. the change of character to character wirering is completely mechanical.

yeah but the electrical part was how it operated. based on making and breaking different circuits. if the battery ran out of juice there is no way that thing would have operated.

[darkv0rt3x]

Check this thing: Enigma machine used by Germans to encrypt messages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_Q9FoD-oQ

a mechanical sha-256 hashing machine would probably be more complex than this enigma thing.  keep in mind too that the enigma was not purely mechanical. it was really electronic in nature.

Yes, I know. I just wanted to have an idea if these hashing machine would be anything like that concept of the Enigma machine! Other than that, yes, it would probably be even more complex as the mathematical processes that take part in the hashing functions are also complex (I have the idea, not the actual knowledge).
So, this said, and as I also said, to pull something like this out, we would need multiple people thinking, writing, modeling parts, drawing parts, manufacturing parts, not to even mention all the theoretical part before all the hardware work, right?

[larry_vw_1955]

So, this said, and as I also said, to pull something like this out, we would need multiple people thinking, writing, modeling parts, drawing parts, manufacturing parts, not to even mention all the theoretical part before all the hardware work, right?

Well it seems like the key thing would be to break this device down into functional subunits that each performs a certain type of task. like XOR, AND,Rightrotate, + mod 2^32. then you can manufacture these subunits in quantity and assemble them into larger subunits that perform any general task.

[vjudeu]

+ mod 2^32

It is simpler than you think. If you can implement addition, getting it modulo 2^32 means simply rejecting the highest bit. And addition can be handled just as a combination of XOR and the majority function. First, you use the lowest bit from "a", the lowest bit from "b", and zero as a carry, and execute a XOR on that to get the lowest bit of the result of addition. Then, using the same input, you execute the majority function: if there are at least 2-of-3 bits set to one, then there is a carry equal to one, otherwise zero. And you can go through it bit-by-bit, then you can save the last carry, if you want to produce 33-bit result for your addition, or just skip it, and then you will have it modulo 2^32, just by dropping one bit.

Another thing is that "modulo addition" and "modulo subtraction" is like rotating a clock: if you have modulo 60, then you can represent seconds. If you add 45 and 50, then you will get 95, but modulo 60 it will be 35. So, modulo addition is like rotating a huge wheel, where after 0xffffffff, you will get 0x00000000 (and the same in the opposite direction is true when you have subtraction). So, I can imagine for example 8 wheels with numbers from 0 to f, when they can be rotated to handle addition, and when each next wheel will tick only when the previous one was rotated by 360 degrees, and jumped from "f" to "0".