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Well hold up a second... quote from that link:

_ In the case of the Ruby language, the 1.9.x branch is not affected by the predictable collision condition since this version includes a randomization of the hashing function._

So there is some merit to what the commenter is saying, though I doubt he knew the above.

Actual ruby arrays (which are arrays and not hashes) will obviously not exhibit this problem though.

I think for all practical purposes, unless you're doing something really weird, the likelyhood of hash function collisions is rare enough that we don't need to think too much about it.



  I think for all practical purposes, unless you're doing 
  something really weird, the likelyhood of hash function 
  collisions is rare enough that we don't need to think too 
  much about it.
Except that, like with PHP, the worrying part is that someone can stuff rack.request.form_hash or rack.request.query_hash (a la PHP's $_POST and $_GET).

(Unlike PHP, though, the Ruby community can head off these particular attacks by releasing a new version of Rack, while waiting for a new 1.8.x release containing a security patch.)




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