Lightweight 8 byte hash function algorithm

Question

I need to extract an 8 byte digest from a variable length string so I\'m looking for such an algorithm that I will implement in c/c++. That will be part of a digital signatu

Answer 1

There is no chance to do a secure hash in 64 bits. Even SHA-1 at 160 bit is considered theoretically broken. You should use SHA2-256 if you really care about secure digital signing. If you don't care about security and just want a hash function that avoids non-adversarial collisions just use the following, it is fine:

constexpr uint64 P1 = 7;
constexpr uint64 P2 = 31;

uint64 hash = P1;
for (const char* p = s; *p != 0; p++) {
    hash = hash * P2 + *p;
}