nanog: Re: Senator Diane Feinstein Wants to know about the Benefits of P2P

[Mike Tancsa <mike () sentex net>]

At 04:12 PM 30/08/2004, Dan Hollis wrote:

> yep md5 made the news recently because it's been cracked:
>
> http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22-5314533.html
> http://www.rtfm.com/movabletype/archives/2004_08.html#001055
Thats a misleading over simplification.  A collision being found implies 
something different than "its cracked."  A weakness that was theorized 
sometime ago has been demonstrated in practice.  Finding collisions and 
altering files in a useful way to produce a duplicate hash are different 
things.  There are FAR bigger security concerns than this one right now IMHO.
I recall even seeing posts about people claiming this meant original data 
being reconstructed from the checksum!  That would be truly amazing since I 
could reconstruct a 680MB ISO from just 61d38fad42b4037970338636b5e72e5a. Wow!
        ---Mike



        ---Mike