TriNetre - Archive for February 17, 2005

(no longer updated)



February 17, 2005
Real-world MD5 collision?
[Security] @ 06:56 PM

It looks like a practical real-world MD5 collision has been demonstrated. Robert J. Hansen writes in the PGP-Basic Yahoo groups:

Dan Kaminsky presented an MD5 collision attack at ShmooCon, by making the Shmoo homepage hash out to the same value as the NSA's homepage. This may be the first real-world practical demonstration of an MD5 collision.

Things continue to move quickly. It's an interesting time to be alive.

Warning: I'm going on firsthand accounts from people who were there, who have a history of being reliable sources. They may be in error about some details, though.



MD5 for compression
[Humour] @ 10:50 AM

Found this gem on the PGP-Basics Yahoo groups:

> Hashes are not used for encryption.

You're right, they're used for file compression aren't they? By the way, I recently compressed my 20MB thesis to a less then 1kb file with MD5. Amazing ratio! Of course, for the sake of security I also deleted all the uncompressed copies.

[]'s
Gustavo