MD5 Deprecated: Why You Should Never Use MD5 for Security
MD5 collision attacks, why it fails as a cryptographic hash, and what to use instead for checksums and password hashing.
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Tags: security, cryptography, md5
MD5 Is Broken: Why You Should Never Use It for Security MD5 was one of the dominant hash functions of the 1990s and 2000s. It's fast, produces a compact 128-bit output, and was considered secure enough for most applications. It is no longer considered secure for any cryptographic purpose. Understanding how it was broken, and what MD5 is still appropriate for, helps you avoid making a mistake that has cost real organizations real data. A Brief History of MD5 Ron Rivest designed MD5 in 1991 as an improvement over MD4. For about a decade, it was widely used for password hashing, digital signatures, and software integrity checks. In 1996, Hans Dobbertin found theoretical weaknesses in MD5's compression function. The security community noted the concern but MD5 remained in wide use. In 2004,…
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