Why does Bitcoin use two rounds of SHA256?

Question

Each blocked is hashed twice. Why isn't one application of SHA256 enough?

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:48

13

From Zooko's answer provided in Crypto StackExchange:

SHA-256(SHA-256(x)) was proposed by Ferguson and Schneier in their excellent book "Practical Cryptography" (later updated by Ferguson, Schneier, and Kohno and renamed "Cryptography Engineering") as a way to make SHA-256 invulnerable to "length-extension" attack. They called it "SHA-256d".

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:48

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answered Jul 30 '12 at 21:52

Stephen Gornick

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Length extension attacks are impossible in Bitcoin because length extension attacks only apply where the hashed data is secret. This answer is incorrect. – Shelby Moore III Feb 22 '22 at 10:40

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 22 '22 at 10:40

My conjecture is the double hashing everywhere was a red-herring to make us think Satoshi was sloppy, lame and take our focus away from a posited valid use case for the RIPEMD160(SHA256).

My lengthy and elaborate rationale is in my answer on the related question.

Why does Bitcoin use two rounds of SHA256?

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