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Re: Re: Re: method of ID'ing

by ilcylic (Scribe)
on Apr 15, 2002 at 01:01 UTC ( [id://159054]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Re: method of ID'ing
in thread method of ID'ing

It has a one to (one of 2 to the 128th) possible values. Since the output domain of MD5 is limited to a 128 bit string, it is possible for more than one value to map to the same output value. It is a very small chance that two of the given inputs would ever map to the same string (unless there were a statistically significant percentage of 2^128 worth of entries) and even if there were, I don't believe this code is being used for something which is intended to be mission critical.

Another issue to consider with MD5 is that the input value needs to be fairly large, if you're using it for 'important' purposes. Since MD5 operates on strings of size evenly divisible by 512, and pads otherwise, it's important to make sure you have at least one full block, to retain computational protection.

Hope that helped.

-il cylic

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