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The long tail of MD5

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Re: The long tail of MD5

#5
Content-MD5 has been removed from HTTPbis.

Don't forget VBA digital signatures BTW, for which MD5 is the only choice. I wonder how feasible a collision attack would be.

Re: The long tail of MD5

#6
Good article that really shows why design decisions can have impact 20, 30 years or more.

This is why I get fairly upset when people design something new I n 2014 that uses md5. Yes even if your application does not use md5 for anything security related, the mere fact that you use a bad, slow algorithm should be considered wrong. And adding new dependencies will make it harder for us to migrate away and extend that tail even further.

If you need a good hash function that is fast, use SipHas. If you need a really secure one, use SHA-512, SHA-3, BLAKE or just SHA-256.

Re: The long tail of MD5

#7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collision attacks are trivial. It's been almost ten years since Ron Rivest declared MD5 broken.

I know, but this does not make MD5 as broken as ROT13.

Depends on what you place in the expression broken. Md5 is useless in anything remotely related to security. An as a non secure function it is slow.

Re: The long tail of MD5

#8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collision attacks are trivial. It's been almost ten years since Ron Rivest declared MD5 broken.

I know, but this does not make MD5 as broken as ROT13.

Considering that the sentence continues with something that is clearly a joke (the SHA-3 standardisation isn't finalized yet, let alone wasn't thought of 20 years ago), some hyperbole is to be expected.

And the point is fair, there's not really anything today where MD5 is an obvious choice.

Re: The long tail of MD5

#10
post #6

Good article that really shows why design decisions can have impact 20, 30 years or more. This is why I get fairly upset when people design something new I n 2014 that uses md5. Yes even if your application does not use md5 for anything security related, the mere fact that you use a bad, slow algorithm should be considered wrong. And adding new dependencies will make it harder for us to migrate away and extend that t…

Do NOT use SipHash as a cryptographic hash function. It is designed to be a PRF, and its output length is way too small to make it collision-resistant when used as a hash. SHA-3, SHA-512/256 or BLAKE(2) (in increasing order of performance) are suitable cryptographic hash functions.
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