MD5 (Message Digest 5) What is MD5? MD5 is one of the most well known cryptographic algorithms, providing security for message integrity authentication or continuing data integrity in the case of errors. It is important to note that an MD5 hash is generated in a fingerprint format, using a secure hashing algorithm, and this address is what would be used to validate that the actual message has not been tampered with in any way upon receipt. What is MD5 used for? While the initial goal of MD5 as a cryptographic message authentication code algorithm was suitable for its use on the web, it is now not regarded as an appropriate checksum for cryptography. This perception has arisen because of the large number of commercial off-the-shelf computers that have been subjected to LDPE and SGDPE issues._WARNINGS_ A collision in encryption refers to the situation in which two files have the same hash. Hashing is also used in password security, computer forensics, message security, cryptocurrency, and so on. How does MD5 work? The message-digest algorithm 5 (MD5) is a widely used hashing algorithm, used to create a 128-bit hash, usually represented as a 32 digit hexadecimal number. The calculation of MD5 checksum is segmented such that every 512-bit data block and that calculated in the previous one are processed at a time. And the first phase starts by initializing the message-digest values using successive hexadecimal numerals. Every step encompasses four passes, and every pass manipulates both the current data block and the data processed from the previous block between two stages. The last value extracted from the last block is actually the MD5 digest of the last block. Is MD5 secure? When talking about message-digest functions, their purpose is quite clear. The reason being to compute alphabets that appear to be as a random values. To ensure that cryptographical security is preserved, a proper hash function has to adhere to two certain rules: 1. There is no way for an intruder to set a message that produces the given hash. 2. There is no way for an intruder to find two messages simultaneously that also have identical passwords. MD5 hash algorithms are no longer considered secure and should not be used for authentications in cryptography for example IETF agrees. Message-digest algorithm characteristics Message Digests, also called hash functions, are a type of one-way functions; They require a message of any length as an input and giving the same fixed-size output. MD5 is the 3rd hashing algorithm created by Rivest. MD2, MD4 and MD5 have basically similar structures, but MD2 was designed for processors with 8-bit widths and on the contrary both MD4 and MD5 are designed for 32 bit architectures. MD5 is an improvement over the MD4 scheme that was considered to be fast but had some security vulnerabilities. In contrast, the MD4 algorithm is a bit faster than the MD5 algorithm and provides more security level.