Re: What is md5sum?

From: P.T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 07/01/04 

Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:26:25 +0200

Micha? Kosmulski <M.Kosmulski@nospam.elka.pw.edu.pl> wrote:
> It's like with the number pi. For an engineer building a car, probably
> pi=3.14 is enough precision. For someone who's building a space rocket,
> perhaps pi=3.14159 is necessary. And, for those particular tasks, these

I'm afraid nobody knows what pi is, because nobody knows what the local
geometry of the universe is. The ratio of a circle's area to its
circumference gets funny answers for big circles in different universe.
So does the sum of the angles of a right-angled triangle.

And I won't even mention small circles ...

> The same goes for MD5. For any thinkable practical task, a file's MD5
> sum is unique to that file. We just have to remember it's a very good
> estimate, but just an estimate, nothing more. That's all.

If you want to estimate, calculate how many years worth of the suns
energy we would have to use in order to search 1/1000th of the md5 space
for a pair of colliding hashes.

When you realize what the answer is , give us a call.

Peter