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How Large is a 160 Bit Number?

Cryptographic hash collisions are always possible. But how likely are they?

The next generation of checksums that gained wide spread use was SHA (later called SHA-0), which avoided the problem of not having a perfect one way function by having a 160 bit result. But they didn't just expand the number of bits, they also addressed some of the underlying core design flaws of MD and SHA, and currently SHA-512 is considered to have 2^256 level of strength - which means no major vulnerability has been found in it. But when you keep in mind that a collision of two 160 bit numbers is as probable as two people selecting the same atom of hydrogen out of the ocean, I think we can agree that the odds are in our favor.

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