On Wed, 12 Dec 2001 WKRfresno_at_aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/12/01 5:16:17 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> shlomif_at_vipe.technion.ac.il writes:
>
> > I believe MD5 was shown to be a perfect hash for arbitrarily-length data
> > by Dr. Ron Rivest who invented it. Otherwise, it would not have been so
> > commonly used for cryptographical applications. However, it takes quite a
> > lot of time to compute.
>
> If that's true, then, as I just submitted in another message, then I am
> probably very wrong. I'm frequently wrong and don't mind being wrong because
> there are plenty of Shlomis and Adrians and Dr. Toms out there to set me
> straight or clarify an issue. How does MD5 compare with other hash schemes
> that you may have tried, in terms of collisions and time?
>
All I know is that it was much better than a very stupid hash function I
tried that a did a 4-byte wide XOR sum of the data. Back then I was so
excited to see that a hash was working very fast (at least as fast as a
binary tree) that I immidiately adopted MD5.
I use only the first 32 bits of the MD5 return code (or 64 bits in rare
cases where an int is defined as a 64-bits integer). I believe Ron Rivest
also showed that any subset of bits of the MD5 checksum is a perfect hash.
Best regards,
Shlomi Fish
> BR
>
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--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish shlomif_at_vipe.technion.ac.il
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail: shlomif_at_techie.com
He who re-invents the wheel, understands much better how a wheel works.
Received on Wed Dec 12 2001 - 12:22:23 IST