sha384

[Skaperen]

i was searching the PDF manual "The Python Library Reference" which does document the sha384 (and others) functions in a section for hashlib.  i searched by pressing Cntl-F (which opens the find area at to bottom and focuses input at it input area) and typed in "sha384".  the first time i did this it found what turns out to be the 2nd instance of the string.  i clicked on the forward button (has a down arrow) and it went no further.  i scrolled up to see where i was which was in section 15.1.1.   I must have misread something and did not see that this was a subsection of 15.1 which named the hashlib module. just a small amount of further upscroll would have shown this but i jumped (too fast, obviously) to the conclusion that it was not here.  i think maybe i was expecting the search to find "sha384" in a section title.  i did not go to Google because i had just done such a search for "sha512" which was noisy (lots of useless hits) although it did find FIPS 180-4 which revealed to me that sha384 also used a 64-bit block size (which is my goal as it is less vulnerable to length extension attacks).  as an alternative i could have used sha512 and then given its result to sha256 for a better 64 hex characters result than plain sha256.  but once i saw that sha384 would give me a standard result only 96 hex characters long with the 64-bit block size, i thought "i could use base 64 to encode down to 64 characters" i decided to see what all i could do with sha384.  that instance of Firefox had already been to a number of abusive sites that could have triggered the real bug somewhere that ended up damaging something in that processes space.  i did have a Firefox just disappear last night and i don't know if it was that one.  after reading the answer posts, i used the Firefox that had been reading python DOT org, openvpn DOT net, and reddit DOT com (nothing abusive) and opened the PDF again and did the same search, again.  this time it found all 3 instances of "sha384".  i use Firefox to read PDFs because it opens them in full screen the way i want.  this is the first time i have had trouble with it reading a PDF.  but it has not driven me back to Adobe, yet.

my plan is to write a command to do or check checksums with the sha384 algorithm, encoded in base64.

FYI, i have 12 different users logged on here.  one is called "forums" and i use it here and the other 2 sites mentioned above.  others are used for concurrent login to different site users at many sites, and for different accounts at AWS, one where i do most of my coding that is not specific to a particular AWS account/project, one to play music (found out how to keep the music playing as i switch users), one for youtube, and one for quick access to root (most of the users have no sudo rights).  each of the 12 users has a 3x3 grid of virtual desktops for a machine-wide total of 108, not counting several screen session i regularly have running.  yes, i do push this Ubuntu Xenial 16.04.3 LTS pretty hard.