Why does HashMap need a cryptographically secure hashing function?

Question

I'm reading a Rust book about HashMap hashing functions, and I can't understand these two sentences.

By default, HashMap uses a cryptographically secure hashing function that can provide resistance to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This is not the fastest hashing algorithm available, but the trade-off for better security that comes with the drop in performance is worth it.

I know what a cryptographically secure hash function is, but don't I understand the rationale behind it. From my understanding a good hash function for HashMap should only have three properties:

• deterministic (the same object has same hash value)
• be VERY fast,
• has a uniform distribution of bits in hash value (meaning it will reduce collision)

Other properties, in cryptographically secure hash function, are not really relevant 99% (maybe even 99.99%) of the time for hash tables.

So my question is: What does "resistance to DoS attack and better security " even mean in the context of HashMap?

Answer 1

Let's start backward: how do you DoS a HashMap?

Over the years, there have been multiple attacks on various software stacks based on Hash Flooding. If you know which framework a site is powered by, and therefore which hash function is used, and this hash function is not cryptographically secure then you may be able to pre-compute, offline, a large set of strings hashing to the same number.

Then, you simply inject this set into the site, and for each (simple) request, it does a disproportionately large amount of work as inserting N elements takes O(N²) operations.

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Rust was conceived with the benefit of hindsight, and therefore attention was paid to avoiding this attack by default, reasoning that users who really need performance out of HashMap would simply switch the hash function.