Re^8: On showing the weakness in the MD5 digest function and getting bitten by scalar context

[BrowserUk]

in reply to Re^7: On showing the weakness in the MD5 digest function and getting bitten by scalar context
in thread On showing the weakness in the MD5 digest function and getting bitten by scalar context

Yes, I think that would work.

A workaround might be quite easy though.

Produce 2 md5s. One from the whole file and another from the file minus 1 byte (first, last or middle). Or make the second md5 just the first half of the file; or from just the 10th, 20th, 30th etc. bytes (or whichever bytes the attack modifies to compromise the md5).

Now the attackers not only have the task of finding a duplicate file with the same md5, they have to produce one that matches two md5s.

Again, my math lets me down, but doesn't that make their job much, *much* harder?

[Anonymous Monk]

Yes, it's probably possible to come up with a workaround that would allow us to continue using MD5 securely, much like triple DES allows us to keep using DES. Now that there's a good alternative to DES, though (namely AES), there's no reason to keep using triple DES (which is slow). There's already a good alternative to MD5, so there's no reason to kludge up a workaround.

Note that nobody ever uses double DES. That's because it is vulnerable to a meet-in-the-middle attack. Secure workarounds are hard to design.