Finnish Firm Claims Fake P2P Hash Technology

An anonymous reader writes "As reported by The Inquirer, a Finnish company known as Viralg Oy claim to have developed software that can create a junk file with the same hash as a genuine p2p download. This, according to the company, can altogether stop the sharing of copywritten files by flooding p2p networks with corrupt/junk data, which then spreads through the network, causing less and less of the original file to be available. However, with the resolve of the p2p userbase, is this software really going to 'beat all Peer 2 Peer pirates at their own game,' or simply prove a minor annoyance?"

Comments

Possible? Yeah

[robpoe]

I've always thought it would be extremely possible to create a file with the same MD5 hash.

Now, what the company has to do is create a file of the SAME FILE SIZE, with the same MD5 hash that's a fake .. then I'll be impressed.

claims?

[geoffspear]

I read the article and everything I could find by following links on their website, and found no reference to how their product supposedly works, or any claim having to do with identical hashes. Did the article submitter just make up the identical hash claim, or is there more information on this product available somewhere else?

What hashing algorithm do they claim to have broken so completely? Sounds like BS to me.

Agreed

[John Seminal]

I wonder why people who use P2P don't help each other out a little more. For example, you have someone with 200 files shared. They are downloading and sharing at the same time. Sometimes they download a bad file, and share it. It would make more sense to have a "unchecked" folder for downloads, then more it to the "checked" folder to share.

What is neat, or not so neat depending on your point of view, are music files which deteriorate after a while. I don't know how they are made, but I have listened to music that sounds pretty good, but after the 10th playing it starts skipping. Or it could be those skips are not very noticable when first played, but once identified, they become annoying.