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Author here. HighwayHash is indeed reasonably fast for a PRF/MAC/fingerprint, but our security claims are not strong enough for it to serve as a cryptographic hash. No collision nor preimage attacks are known to us, but it would not be appropriate to use HighwayHash in this context.

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Thanks for the response, yes I can understand the preference in security context and dont want to drop 'why cryptographic hash' bomb into discussion, I was just thinking maybe keeping sha256/512 as default but having switchable options through the configuration for alternatives like your implementation or proven implementations or using filesystem features. No matter what that is laziness from my side, just throwing question rather than spending time on source.

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