Differences between version 8 and predecessor to the previous major change of MD5.
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| Newer page: | version 8 | Last edited on Saturday, February 28, 2009 5:10:51 pm | by LawrenceDoliveiro | Revert |
| Older page: | version 6 | Last edited on Monday, March 15, 2004 9:40:42 am | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -1,15 +1,16 @@
MD5 (Message Digest [Algorithm]) is a CryptographicHash algorithm.
-The algorithm takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit "fingerprint" or "message digest" of the input. It is conjectured that it is computationally infeasible
to produce two messages having the same message digest, or to produce any message having a given prespecified target message digest. The MD5 algorithm is intended for digital signature applications, where a large file must be "compressed" in a secure manner before being encrypted with a private (secret) key under a public-key cryptosystem such as RSA.[1]
+The algorithm takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit "fingerprint" or "message digest" of the input. It is conjectured that it is ComputationallyInfeasible
to produce two messages having the same message digest, or to produce any message having a given prespecified target message digest. The MD5 algorithm is intended for digital signature applications, where a large file must be "compressed" in a secure manner before being encrypted with a private (secret) key under a public-key cryptosystem such as RSA.[1]
Basically MD5 is an easy way to verify the integrity of a piece of data.
Some common uses of MD5 are for
* HashTable
* PasswordEncryption
* Making long strings shorter
+MD5 is nowadays [considered weak|http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/more_md5_collis.html]. [Do not use|http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/more_hash_funct.html] in applications where you might need to guard against malicious modification of your data.
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~mabzug1/cs/md5/md5.html
[1] RFC:1321
