Jul 05 2009
Why not use an MD5 algorithm?
An MD5 algorithm is very popular from the beginning of its existence. Currently you shouldn’t use it because of its weaknesses. There are many sites like www.md5crack.com or passcracking.com where you can recover your MD5 hash values easily and quickly. These use so called rainbow tables and also hybrid rainbow tables to crack hash values. Hybrid Rainbow is a new overpowered method combining hybrid attack and popular precalculation technique. Joining flexibility of hybrid attack with convenience and speed of table cryptanalysis it lets easily recover passwords considered “hard” and even “impossible to recover” before. You should use an SHA-512 or a Whirlpool algorithm instead. But Google says something else. You can check in the Google Trends that a therm md5 generator is searched over 10 times often than a therm SHA generator. People must understand that using the MD5 isn’t safe. They should switch to SHA-2 algorithms family or Whirlpool algorithm.