You're correct, humanhash was never intended to be secure. I felt that, for usability, I'd have to surrender some collision protection in exchange for brevity. I was originally taking the first N bytes, but I decided to use a simple XOR-based checksum over N chunks of the input instead. This may have been cargo cult cryptography.
I hadn't seen the PGP word list; thanks a lot for that. I would integrate that list this very second if I could, but I'm concerned that PGP owns the copyright to the list.
It's generally accepted, with modern cryptographic hash functions, that's it's better to just take the first N bytes, rather than run a naive checksum over the hash.
I hadn't seen the PGP word list; thanks a lot for that. I would integrate that list this very second if I could, but I'm concerned that PGP owns the copyright to the list.