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> Hash-based digital signatures are secure (resistant to forgery) as long as the hash function they are built on has second-pre-image resistance

I am not very experienced with this, but isn't this clearly wrong?

If I have a controllable collision (like SHA1), I can get someone to sign document A, then destroy all evidence of document A's existence and claim they signed document B.

Isn't it essential that a digital signature scheme is immune against such an attack?



I think generally you're signing things you generated, like your own binaries, your code, that sort of thing. The part where collisions matter is if you're signing someone else's documents, like a CA signing TLS certs, or someone in the web of trust signing the keys of someone based on their ID.


Generally people won't sign garbage or random documents, so Document A has to be of a very specific subset of documents a person would sign. Then finding Document B constitutes a second pre-image attack.


You're right as long as the format doesn't contain a place to hide all of the garbage (e.g. Crap not rendered in a PDF by the PDF viewer).




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