Identicons are used to create unique images based on IP address or strings. Lots

Question

Identicons are used to create unique images based on IP address or strings. Lots of programs are available to generate identicons based on an input string.

My question is how hard is to do the reverse. Identify the source string of an identicon. In other words what is the strength of the hash function used to generate an identicon.

Can the concept of identicon be extended to generate public-private key pairs? It would be lot attactive to have two images as public and private key rather than a boring text file

Explanation / Answer

The identicons idea is not bound to some predefined hash, so you will have to look at the specification or at the source code of the specific implementations.

The reversal is obviously is as hard as the hash function used in the particular implementation, if at all possible in case when the identicon representation contains fewer bits than the original data.

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