How Is the Concept of a "Hash Collision" a Theoretical Security Risk for Merkle Trees? ▴ Learn

How Is the Concept of a “Hash Collision” a Theoretical Security Risk for Merkle Trees?

A hash collision occurs when two different inputs produce the exact same hash output. If an attacker could find a collision for a leaf node, they could replace a valid transaction with a fraudulent one that generates the same hash.

If the hashes match, the Merkle Root would remain unchanged, and the fraud would go undetected. While current cryptographic hash functions (like SHA-256) are designed to make finding collisions computationally infeasible, the theoretical possibility remains a fundamental security consideration for Merkle Trees.

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