Re^5: MD5 - what's the alternative

in reply to Re^4: MD5 - what's the alternative
in thread MD5 - what's the alternative

That's something else I was wondering about. Where is the attacker supposedly snooping that they can capture an MD5'd password? Why doesn't the attacker just snoop to capture the plaintext password instead? This "vulnerability" is very light on details.

Comment on Re^5: MD5 - what's the alternative

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^6: MD5 - what's the alternative by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 27, 2004 at 12:08 UTC
I agree. Very light. All the description I've read say is that they have found a way of finding or generation collisions. So what? We always knew there were collisions. The only "evidence", shows two pre-calculated datasets that produce the same md5. What I haven't seen (though maybe the conference gave more detail than I can find), is any technique for generating the plaintext from the md5? If the mechanism starts with the original plaintext, to generate another plaintext with the same md5--why are they bothering? They already have the original! Hmmm. Maybe there is some real information out there somewhere. Examine what is said, not who speaks. "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham "Think for yourself!" - Abigail "Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^6: MD5 - what's the alternative
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 27, 2004 at 12:08 UTC

I agree. Very light. All the description I've read say is that they have found a way of finding or generation collisions. So what? We always knew there were collisions.

The only "evidence", shows two pre-calculated datasets that produce the same md5. What I haven't seen (though maybe the conference gave more detail than I can find), is any technique for generating the plaintext from the md5?

If the mechanism starts with the original plaintext, to generate another plaintext with the same md5--why are they bothering? They already have the original!

Hmmm. Maybe there is some real information out there somewhere.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom