I thought I would begin a series of posts with interesting facts about bitcoin mining and some of its many components. I think its very interesting how everything came together and how existing ideas and technologies were used with new ideas. I hope you all enjoy!
SHA256
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a United States government agency that is responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. One of the technologies that the NSA has developed is the Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA-256). SHA256 is a cryptographic hexadecimal hash function that is used to secure data. SHA-256 is a member of the SHA-2 family of cryptographic hash functions, which were first published in 2001. SHA-256 is similar to the other members of the SHA-2 family, but it uses a different number of bits in the hash output. The output of SHA-256 is a 256-bit hash value, which is a unique representation of the input data.
SHA-256 is widely used in various applications that require secure data transmission, such as digital signatures, data integrity, and password hashing. One of the most notable uses of SHA-256 is in the cryptocurrency industry, where it is used to secure transactions on the Bitcoin network. an interesting function of this is the avalanche effect, any changes to the encrypted data, even the slightest change completely alters the hash value.
The NSA first proposed the use of SHA-256 in 2005 as a standard for digital signatures in the Federal government. The standard was adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2011 as a recommended standard for Federal agencies. The NSA has also developed other cryptographic technologies, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). These technologies are widely used in government and commercial applications to secure data and protect against cyber attacks.
Overall, the development of SHA-256 by the NSA has been widely adopted and used to secure important information. Its reliability and security has proven to be valuable to many different industries and organizations including the crypto industry, where as we know its Widley used in mining and the creation of bitcoin addresses.
more to come at a later date! but i promise if you decide to follow along I will try to keep it short, sweet and interesting!